**KRIS MEDLEN
On finishing strong for month of August
“Yeah, I think I’ve strung a few starts in a row together. I’m pretty confident. I had some loud outs early, but we made some adjustments and even when I messed up a few fastballs I was trying to go in on later in the game, I think they were starting to sit on my off-speed so I was able to kind of utilize that even if I didn’t execute my fastball exactly the way I wanted to.”
On sweeping the Indians, a playoff contender
“It was huge. I mean, they were pretty close games, so it’s not like we blew them out of the water. But B-Mac today capitalizes on a mistake pitch and we had to take advantage of that, I had to take advantage of that and keep putting zeroes up. The defense played great behind me. Like I said, I gave up some pretty loud outs. Schafe made a pretty good through – well, a great throw – to second base early on, so it was just a huge defensive day for us, because they were putting the ball in play.”
On his curveball
“Adding that curveball in there is just something to get them off my change-up. For them to be sitting on the change-up, it’s just another look for them. But yeah, it was a pretty big pitch for me today. I made some mistakes on my fastball, but I got away with it because they were starting to sit on my off-speed.”
On getting an early lead
“Any time you’re a pitcher who’s given a lead, you want to just go out and stay aggressive. Even when you make mistakes, more times than not guys are still going to get themselves out. As a starter or a reliever (with a lead) you just want to go in there and be aggressive and don’t let guys get on base for free, make them earn it.”
On being in a groove now
“I feel like I’ve kind of clicked for the whole month of August. Not exactly the way I wanted to, but I’m not walking guys and I’m being aggressive. That’s the me that I know. Especially going against the Cardinals and the Indians, two pretty good lineups, and I’ve kind of put it together. Hopefully I can swing it through September. If we play as well as we did against the Indians, a quality team, it’s big for us.”
**BRIAN McCANN
On Medlen’s performance
“We’ve been getting pitching all season long. That’s the reason we’re in the position we’re in. We’ve got five guys going out every night and giving us quality starts. That’s all you need to do. You hand it over to our bullpen and let them do their thing, that’s been the recipe for success over the past couple of weeks.
“Big win.”
How satisfying a night to both work with a pitcher for seven scoreless innings and hit a three-run homer for all the runs
“For me it’s just big to get a win. Medlen, I feel like he’s pitched great all season long. I don’t think he got run support early, and people were wanting to question him in our rotation. He’s got a 3.5 ERA. You look around the league and there’s teams that would love to have guys with a 3.5 ERA in their (rotation). We just didn’t score him many runs early. But he’s battled back and he’s looking like the guy of last year, where he’s going and putting up zeroes every inning.”
On Medlen’s efficiency tonight
“He got a lot of outs early with his fastball, which, any time he does that and they haven’t really seen his change-up, which is the best in the game, and that curveball keeps getting better and better – it’s going to be tough for them to score runs off him if they haven’t seen it and we’re into the fourth or fifth inning.”
On the home run
“He was throwing me a lot of off-speed pitches and I was looking out over the plate, and he hung a slider right there and I was able to put a good swing on it.”
On the low-scoring run totals in recent wins
“As players we don’t think about what the score it. We’re going out there playing. I can’t even tell you – you guys are telling me we’re playing a lot of low-scoring games, but we’re just trying to win ballgames, and that’s what we’re doing. There’s been times where the offense has carried us, and times when starting pitching’s carried us, and the bullpen’s carried us all year. We’re a well-rounded team.”
**FREDI GONZALEZ
On holding his breath with Justin getting hit in the hand
“Yeah. Everything (X-rays) came back negative. He probably will be a little sore, but that’s fine. I’d rather take sore than the alternative. We’ll go day to day with him.”
On the game
“Medlen was terrific. He really was. Three-run homer by McCann and we held on, played good defense and we pitched good. Kimbrel, I don’t think he gave up a baserunner in this series. That’s a good combination.”
I know you’d prefer to score more runs, but can low-scoring wins like this prepare team for postseason?
“Well, it’s going to be low-scoring because you’re going to be facing the No. 1s and No. 2s the whole time out there (in the playoffs). It’s not by design to prepare your team or anything like that. It’s a good way to keep playing good baseball all the way through.”
On Medlen now vs. in May
“It’s been a while now that he’s been pitching pretty decent. I think sometimes expectations from the year before of stuff that he was doing that was really kind of fantasy stuff that he was running last year and people expect that you can do that the following year. But he wasn’t as bad as people made it out to be (early this season).
“He was giving you good outings, maybe not getting the run support and not getting the wins or the results that we wanted to. We were comparing him to the 2012 season but he’s been good. His command was good today right from the very beginning. All his pitches were working. His curveball, his change-up, his fastball command was outstanding. He gave us a hell of an outing.”
On if Schafer gets at-a-boy for defensive plays despite his four-strikeout night
“Yeah, he’s one of the few guys that can impact the game defensively, even in baserunning. He did it yesterday, stealing a base, today he throws out a runner at second base. He had a tough night at the plate, but he can impact the game.”
Did you have to talk Justin into coming out the game?
“No. It was weird. I came in to tell Carlos (Tosca) who I wanted to go out and so I see Justin and Lovey going back out, so I’m thinking ok he’s fine. He’s going to stay in the game. And Justin goes, ‘I don’t know the rule. I better touch first.’ That’s why they were touching first. But he’s fine. A couple innings later Bubba came out and told me the X-rays were negative so that’s good.”
On what he said to make him laugh when his hand was hurting
“I said. I thought you were coming out. He said well we didn’t know if we had to touch first or not. I said, well not both of you guys.”
On Medlen efficiency
“He finished seven innings right at under 100 pitches. We were trying to add on another run of the eighth and ninth inning, the way our bullpen was we wanted to give a little more cushion. But yeah he throws the ball over the plate.”
On McCann making a career of hitting good pitching
“Yeah, he’s a good hitter. He’s a good player. He doesn’t get enough credit behind the plate either sometimes in a situation like the eighth inning, when he got Carpenter through that eighth inning.”
Do you expect it to be a day or two of rest for Justin?
“Right now I’m thinking I’m just going to give him tomorrow off and go from there. But yeah I’m thinking just one.”
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