WASHINGTON — Braves quotes from Shelby Miller, Joey Terdoslavich and Fredi Gonzalez after Wednesday’s 11-inning, 2-1 loss to the Nationals.
**JOEY TERDOSLAVICH
On trying to advance to 2nd base on sac fly, getting thrown out easily
“It wasn’t the right play. The winning run’s on third, my run doesn’t mean anything. Just tried to be aggressive. He made a great throw, but I shouldn’t have went. I should have stayed at first.”
Have to weight everything quickly in that situation; felt like right move at the time?
“Yeah, I mean, I ran, so…. I thought he was flat-footed. I thought he was deep in the gap. But I’ve got to be 100 percent (sure) there, and obviously I wasn’t 100 percent. It can’t happen. I thought that my aggressive got us in a bad spot there. You’ve got the (go-ahead) run on third there. Now instead of having to get two outs, they only have to get one.”
**SHELBY MILLER
On tough loss for Braves and no decision for him after seven innings of three-hit ball
“It was a good ballgame all around. We obviously didn’t come out with the win, but we played hard the whole time. Came back in the ninth and got us at least tied. We were in a good situation there, just kind of ran into some bad luck. We played hard, just got beat.”
On handling his seven-start winless streak so well
“That’s part of the game. All I’m trying to do is go out there and pitch. Obviously wins are good, they’re great. But at the end of the day, we lost. I’m not going out and trying to win it for myself, we’re trying to win it for a team, and we’re trying to get in first place and we’re playing a tough team. It’s obviously frustrating losing two games already (in the series) when we’re trying to chase this thing, but we’ve just got to keep grinding it out.”
As well as you pitched early, did you feel this might be one of those special nights?
“I felt good. The stuff was there tonight. A.J. caught a good game, we made some great defensive plays. Like I said, I try to go out there and put up zeroes. Obviously Jordan was throwing a great game, doing the same thing. We came back in the bottom of the ninth, got into the ballgame. It just didn’t work out our way at the end. But at the end of the day, in this game you’ve got to look at the positives. We played hard, we played a great game. It just didn’t come out our way.”
On positives he can take from his outing
“I pitched good. I was just trying to go out and match Jordan the whole time. He was doing the same thing, he was pitching great. It’s tough to get some at-bats going against a guy who’s doing that. But like I said, we came back in the ninth, did a good job with that, which is huge. We just didn’t finish it.”
**FREDI GONZALEZ
On Terdoslavich’s decision to try to advance to second on sac fly
“It’s an aggressive play. If you make it, it’s a great play. If you don’t make it, then you’ve got to answer the questions at the end of the night. You’ve got to make a good throw from 180 feet away, so I’m not overly mad on that one really. It’s an aggressive-baseball baserunning play, and Span made a helluva throw and they’ve got to put a tag down.
On Miller’s performance
“Shelby was tremendous. He even made a great pitch to Harper there, he just barely got it over the infield and they scored a run. But he was tremendous, he really was. And we battled. We got a lot of people on base, did a nice job against Storen in the ninth inning. We just didn’t get it done. When you’re playing extra-inning games, it’s tough.
“We brought our closer in in the ninth inning in a tie game, (to face their) 3, 4 and 5 (hitters). We felt comfortable doing that with him, and we tried to win the ballgame.”
On Jordan Zimmermann
“There’s a lot of guys on that pitching staff that get a lot of credit, and sometimes there’s not enough credit given to him. But he is tough. He really is tough, and he showed how good he is today. I thought it was going to be one of those nights where both guys pitch complete games, one ends up being the loser, 1-nothing. But both of those guys, and Shelby in particular, had some really good stuff going.”
On Miller’s seven-start winless streak
“It’s unbelievable, it really is. Today, if we just gave him half a run…. Just go out there and if he keeps pitching the way he’s pitching, he’ll start rattling off some wins.”
On how well Miller’s handled things during the winless streak
“He’s a straight pro. Before this run he was on a good run, and he was the same guy. I don’t worry about his psyche at all.”
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