SAN FRANCISCO — Braves quotes from Shelby Miller, A.J. Pierzynski and Fredi Gonzalez after Thursday’s 7-0 loss to the Giants.
**FREDI GONZALEZ
On Shelby Miller’s performance, just one mistake pitch cost him
“Shelby did his part. Tremendous outing. You figure every time you go out there and you give up one run, you’ve got a real good chance to win a ballgame. And we did. We were down 1-nothing in the eighth inning and tried to keep it there, and we didn’t. We couldn’t. We thought we had the right guys in there, and they put a big number on us. It’s tough to come back from seven in the ninth inning.”
Attribute any of that to rust perhaps with Cunniff?
“I don’t know. He’s been up (in bullpen). I thought he was the best guy for that job at that particular time, that we had down there.”
Did you think that homer off Belt’s bat was going to get out of the park?
“I didn’t. Not the way the ball wasn’t traveling all day long. He hit it and I’m thinking OK, I see Cunningham and I see Maybin going after it, they’re going to catch it. Then he kind of pulled up and the ball went fairly deep, four or five rows into left-center field. He’s a bit strong guy, and he got ahold of it.”
When Miller got out of that jam in seventh, did you think he might throw another complete game?
“In my mind I was thinking, if he gets out of the seventh inning I was going to let him hit in the eighth, he was that dominant. And even when Simmons leads off the eighth (single) I’m thinking, leave him in the game and bunt him over or do something. Because he was that dominant pitching. But we tried to get the W there and get a run, and we didn’t. We had a guy in scoring position there, but Romo made a nice pitch.”
On decision not to bunt there
“It’s hard. You don’t want to give outs away. But it’s a tough decision, it really is, no matter how your offense is. It’s also dictated by how your bullpen is, do you want to go for a win there, do you want to tie, do you want to leave Shelby in there and let him keep pitching. It’s really a lot of stuff up in the air because he’s pitching so good, our bullpen right now in that situation is kind of up in the air, when we’re down. And our offense is struggling to score runs. There’s so many different ways you could go in that inning. So many different variables and ways you could go that inning. It’s kind of fun, really. Obviously we didn’t make the right decision.” (I think asked him what he meant by that, if he thought he made the wrong decision, and Gonzalez said no, he made the right decision, it just didn’t work out as planned.)
**SHELBY MILLER
On the homer run by Belt
“It was a bad pitch. I go back and look at the video, it’s down the middle, four-seamer, and if I could take it back I would. It’s a tough hit to give up at that point of the ballgame. It kind of gave them some momentum and it showed the rest of the game, so that’s something I can’t do right there. I’m taking the blame on that loss. Bad time to give it up.”
So you feel like you can’t make any mistake at all, no room for error?
“No, that’s not the case. It was just deeper in the ballgame, so our backs are kind of against the wall right there. At that point of the game, seventh inning, you’re trying to go out there and put up a zero, and you give up a run. Against a team that pretty much closes it out with the bullpen they’ve got. Like I said, it’s a tough hit to give up. I wish I could have it back to make a better pitch.”
On getting out of tight spot in the sixth
“Yeah, we got out of a good jam. Threw a heater to Panik and got a little fly ball to Simmons. Threw a cutter to Pence, got a ground ball and got out of that jam. It was nice. But at the end of the day, we lost the game.”
On how he felt
“I felt good. I felt like the sinker might have been the best it’s been all year. Got a lot of ground balls early in the game. Just that one bad pitch essentially lost us the ballgame. Like I said, it’s just a terrible time to give up a home run.”
**A.J. PIERZYNSKI
Shelby pretty much make just the one mistake?
“Yeah, he threw the ball great. He made a mistake and Belt did it all. I mean, other than that he was in control the whole might. Unfortunately the offense didn’t do anything. Tough loss.”
Did you think Belt’s fly ball was going to get out for the homer?
“He barreled it and back-spun it and it got up in the wind and just kind of kept going. This park plays weird, that (left-center) is kind of the spot to hit it if you’re going to hit one. There was a couple of other balls they hit that way – Belt hit another and Crawford hit one – that just seemed to take off once they got into that wind.
“It was just one of those games. You’re not going to win a lot of games scoring zero runs.”
On Giants pitcher Heston, making his 10th MLB start
“We had a good idea. We were going to try to get him up. I thought we put some good swings on the some balls and he made some good plays. We had a chance there with Markakis up. It was just one of those nights. We hit some balls hard, they made some plays. We made one mistake and they too advantage of it.”
On the six-run eighth inning
“It just got away from us really quick. I mean, a leadoff walk, a groundball up the middle that goes off our second baseman’s glove on a nice try, and then a bunt for hit, and a bad hop to Simba. It just kind of got away from us real quick. But Brandon (Cunniff) will learn from it. Hope he doesn’t get discouraged, and the next time he gets the ball in that situation, he’ll learn from it and get better.”
