Braves quotes after Tuesday’s 11-3 win at Pittsburgh

“He navigates through lineups and doesn’t give you anything good to hit. When he gets his breaking ball over, it’s good for us. And it’s nice for him to get deep in the game. We were trying to get him a complete game, but you get to a point where you don’t want to put him at risk.

“It was a good win. We swung the bats really, really well, and kept the line moving a couple of times.”

On the offense, 18 runs in two nights equaling your scoring total on the recent 8-game trip

“That’s baseball. When you’re playing well, stuff like this happens. Obviously it correlates, when you don’t swing bats you don’t score runs or win games. But we’re swinging the bats good, playing good baseball. Just keep moving forward.”

On Justin’s 24 homers, 80 RBIs after homer and 5 RBIs tonight

“He’s having a solid Justin Upton year, and we’ve still got, what, 30-something (36) games left, and at the end of the day he puts up those numbers. He’s a good player.”

Seems like when he gets hot these past couple of years, the Braves go on good runs

“Yeah, he gets hot and he can carry us. He’s done that a few months. It’s nice to have that big bat right behind Freeman, who’s starting to roll the pole a little bit also. It’s good.”

On only one run scoring on B.J.’s bases-loaded hit off the right-field wall

“That was a good at-bat by B.J. I thought he had some pretty good at-bats all day today. Again, we talk about the guy at second (Evan Gattis was the runner at second) always having the worst seat in the house, and it’s happened to Gatty a couple of times. It happens. A guy that can run a little bit can make up for (that mistake) and score, and nobody says a word. But we’ll keep working with him; Dougy (Dascenzo, third base coach) will keep working with him. But the guy at second base – and I’m not trying to protect him at all – but the guy at second base always has the worst read in the whole place.”

On the Gattis ninth-inning colossal home run to left field off the stadium pedestrian ramps

“I was talking to Walk (hitting coach Greg Walker) about his approach, and he goes, ‘Well, he committed about four or five days ago to keep (focused on hitting to) right-center. To get back to hitting the ball to right-center. That approach made him do that – the guy hung him a breaking ball and he hit it out of the ballpark.”

Was Simmons’ exit related to his recent ankle injury?

“No, it was his hip. He was swinging and it wasn’t because he was overswinging or anything, or his ankle, he just couldn’t stay on his left leg there. He did it three times, three at-bats, and finally I said, I’m going to get him out of there before this becomes something that’s bad. I talked to Bubba (trainer Jeff Porter) after the game and he said it’s muscle, we’ve got to stretch him and do treatment, and hopefully get him back in the lineup tomorrow.”

“He’s an aggressive swinger. If you look, in the two at-bats before that he fell down. He just couldn’t stay on his leg.”

Been bothering him for a while?

“No, just the last day or two. So we’ll see. We’ll evaluate him and hopefully it’s just day-to-day. If there’s any reason to hold him out, we’ll hold him out.”

**JUSTIN UPTON

Did you guys see this kind of offensive turnaround coming, think it was possible?

“We definitely didn’t get negative or anything. We were positive throughout our struggles. We know how baseball is. Baseball can drive you nuts, and you can have some great times, too. So we’re just going to try to continue to stay positive and just try to ride it out.”

On the whole lineup contributing lately

“From top to bottom we’ve been able to put the ball in play and get hits.”

On his brother getting only one RBI for his bases-loaded opposite-field single off the wall

“Sometimes it goes that way, man. It’s a funny game. But good things happened, we swung the bats well, and it’s good to see.”

On Harang

“He gave the bullpen a rest, pitched a lot of innings, and he pitched well, stayed on the corners. He pitched. That’s what he does. He’s really good at it.”

On being in a ‘zone’ personally, on this hot streak

“I’m still doing the same things I’ve been doing all season. I’m just preparing myself, going out there and trying to help us any way we can.”

Does it feel like flight home from Seattle was a long time ago?

“Yeah, it’s been a long stretch. We’re in the middle of another long stretch, but it’s nice.”

On his view of Gattis’ epic homer

“That was a joke. He hammered it.”

**AARON HARANG

One of your more efficient outings for most of the way?

“Yeah, I felt comfortable, I was throwing all my pitches around the zone. I wasn’t falling behind, I was getting ahead early and making them put the ball in play…. Guys were making plays behind me.”

On pitching with a lead

“Once you get more of a lead you can go in and try to execute early, try to get them to put the ball in play and let the defense work behind you, try to be more around the zone.”

On the team’s offensive turnaround recently

“Everybody’s swinging well, we’re taking advantage of any kind of miscues and the guys are up there being aggressive and hitting the ball hard. We’ve just got to look at it one game at a time, look to win each series, not get too far ahead of ourselves.”

On Justin Upton’s torrid hitting recently

“He really got it going there with that three-run homer, and got the guys fired up in the dugout. It was good to see.”

**JASON HEYWARD

On offense producing big recently, and combining it with good pitching

“It’s nice to string together a few nice games. We can kind of be at ease and go have some fun again. We had some games that we lost there that were close, then we had some that we lost where we kind of got beat up. But we were playing some good teams in their ballparks, and we played a good team at home, the A’s, played them really tough. Now it’s a good start to our road trip.”

On getting contributions from up and down the lineup

“That makes it easier on everybody, I’m telling you. There was a joke (tonight), not throwing C.J. (Chris Johnson) under the bus, but Laird was saying somebody had to keep the game going (by making outs; Johnson was the only Brave in the lineup that didn’t get a hit). But it’s just nice when your whole lineup is contributing, man. We got big hits, big ABs from everyone, and that’s huge. And to have your pitcher go out and throw like that, it makes it that much better.”

On J-Up keeping his hot streak going on road (he’s hit far better at home most of the season)

“I joked with him earlier this year when we were on the road, ‘Hey, we’re still at home right now, OK?’ I kind of played around with him with that today. But he’s been doing it for us, he’s been big. He’s been locked in. It’s nice to have that in your lineup, obviously, and he goes out there every day and plays hard for us, plays good defense in the outfield, and that’s all you can ask. He wants to be in the big spots, he’s not backing down and he has some good guys around him who can help him go up there and relax.”

On Gattis tape-measure homer

“That was fun to see. We know what kind of pop he has. That was one of those, you didn’t know when it was going to come down or where. You know he’s got the pop, but it always amazes you when he catches ahold of one.”