Braves quotes from Shelby Miller, Jace Peterson and Fredi Gonzalez after Sunday’s 4-1 loss to the Marlins.
**SHELBY MILLER
How tough is to continue to be patient and professional throughout your winless streak?
“Just keep showing up. Pitch every five days and try to help the team win. Eventually this is going to go by. Eventually I’m going to win a game and we won’t be talking about it no more. But right now it’s all about going out and trying to get a win for the team, more than myself.”
Do you get to point where you just can’t worry about wins and losses, just the team result?
“Yeah, you hear a lot about wins and losses kind of dying out for a starting pitcher. But at the same time, you’re going out there trying to win. Like I said, team wins are obviously the main goal, then eventually if you get a win for yourself, that’s great. But at the end of the day, I’m all about winning in general. Come in the clubhouse with a winning attitude and a winning mentality, and we’ve got the guys to do that. It’s just right now I haven’t got a win for a little bit.”
So that’s the worse part, the team not winning more than you not getting a win?
“Yeah. Obviously we played a good series here at home, and moving forward we still believe in ourselves. We still think we’ve got a chance. Obviously we traded away some guys, some big pieces, and brought in some big pieces. Still trying to hunt this thing down, but we’re playing good right now.”
Chance you might have gone six innings if didn’t need to pinch-hit for you in sixth, so can you walk away from this looking at it as a good start?
“In 2013, my rookie year, I’d look at this and be happy. You give up two runs and go five innings, stuff like that. But (now) I’m trying to go nine innings every single time, and at least deeper than five innings. Obviously the pitch count was up a little early. I know the difference between good starts and bad starts. Obviously I could have went back out there, but at the same time my stuff wasn’t sharp by any means. Nothing was. Not my cutter, my fastball command was terrible, mechanics were off. I mean, it was just kind of a rough day for me personally out there. But I’m a guy who’ll figure it out this coming week and look forward to the next one.”
**JACE PETERSON
On getting just two hits against Brad Hand
“We hit some balls good, but just didn’t find holes. He threw well, unfortunately we couldn’t get it done. We had the right approach, just didn’t come through with the win.”
Had right guys at plate with two on in the eighth (Maybin and Markakis)
“Yeah, we gave ourselves a chance, that’s all we can ask for. Nick put a good swing on it again, just didn’t find a hole. That’s part of the game. Just got to keep going.
“It seemed like every ball we hit to the outfield, they caught. It goes back to just sticking with our approach and continuing to swing and hopefully we can get some more to fall.”
On Shelby Miller’s winless streak
“It seems like when he pitches, we don’t get the hits that we need to get. It’s unfortunate. It’s part of the game, I’m sure he’ll say the same thing. We go out there every day to compete and do the best we can and get him a win; that goes for anybody that’s out there on the mound. Unfortunately his luck’s been like that and we just haven’t been able to get it done.”
“We’ve just got to continue to stay at it and keep swinging, and he’ll get a win here soon, I promise you that.”
On how well Miller’s handled the disappointment and frustration
“He just has to control what he can control, and that’s what he does. He just needs to go and make pitches, and let us try to score runs. I think he’s done a great job of that. He understands the game, he’s been around long enough, he knows how it works.”
**FREDI GONZALEZ
On Shelby’s high pitch count early, and the game in general
“Some command (issues), a lot of foul pitches. They put the ball in play, they fouled it off. I didn’t want to take a chance in running him out there for any more than he gave us. So that’s that. They executed two nice safety squeeze (bunts), and the way you did it you can’t even defend it, really.
“Our bullpen kept us in the game and we had a chance. (Brad) Hand was tough; I think we only got one hit there for six innings and it was a double by Shelby. Other than that, he kept us off-balance a little bit. We had a chance to tie the game with the hottest hitter on our team (Markakis) and he hit a nice hooking ball down the right-field line and Ichiro ran it down. Their outfield play today was very good.”
On the series win (3-1)
“When you get a chance to sweep somebody, you always want do that. But I think overall we had a nice homestand. We have an off day, then go play American League for two days, then come back home.”
Seems like it doesn’t matter who the opposing pitcher is, you guys just don’t score when Shelby Miller is pitching
“And you know what? It could change at any moment. And next year it’ll be the opposite. We’ve seen it so many times in our game. You can’t quantify it. You try to quantify it or come up with some kind of theory and you really can’t. There’s always somebody that gets (more than their share of) day games, somebody gets the rain delays, a team scores a lot of runs (for some pitchers) and sometimes you don’t.”
You think the hitters might put more pressure on themselves when he’s pitching at this point of the streak?
“I don’t know. I don’t think about it myself, I’m thinking about just trying to get runs and trying to win the game. But that’s a question you may want to ask one of those offensive guys. I’d be really surprised if they said yes.”
Do you have to talk to Shelby at this point in the streak?
“We’ve all talked, even before it got to double digits. We’ve talked constantly. I’ve observed body language, I’ve observed work ethic, I’ve observed the way he comes in and does everything. And he’s still doing it like he was 15-0. And good for him.”
Bourn and Swisher fly outs to warning track, Swisher a step in front of wall
“I like the way Swisher’s swinging the bat, so that’s a good sign. And Bourny came off the bench – I don’t know when the last time he came off the bench in an American League game – but came off the bench and put a nice pass at that ball.”
On having Maybin and Markakis up with two on and one out in eighth
“We had the right guys at the plate. Petey came up with a big hit there. Maybin – we had the right guys.”
