Phil Garner Bit Quotations

I would say he threw pretty good. He's probably a little bit rusty, but still threw pretty good. The first couple innings he was sharp. With the exception of a couple home runs, I thought he threw the ball pretty good. It was basically his first outing of the spring.

I didn't necessarily think it was a big loss. One of my things that I feel is, if you put so much of your capital in any one player, it's going to hurt you in my opinion. So I think it might have been a little bit of a blessing.

For us it's long suffering -- 44 years of getting close and not getting to the big dance has been a little bit frustrating.

He's a bit disappointed, and justifiably so. Chris is swinging the bat well and I wanted to get (Mike) Lamb in the game. He's swinging the bat well, too.

He's played well and ironically he looks great this spring. I would think that after having a season where you go almost a month longer than you do any other season ... he would have come to spring training and be a little bit slow. But he's actually looked better this spring than he did last spring.

He could have taken the rest of the year just to rehab, which is probably a lot of the advice that he had received. He decided that he was going to push it a little bit and try to come back this year, just in case.

He did a good job of making pitches when he needed to. We'd like to see him pitch ahead a bit more. He got behind a lot of hitters. But he did a pretty good job of making the pitches when he had to.

He's had a couple of games when he actually looked a little bit human - but sometimes we have to pick him up, too. Sometimes, you have to outscore the other team.

He's better than people want to give him credit. What comes into play is he looks a little bit awkward at times. When he stretches he looks like he's falling instead of in balance, but he makes the play.

He'll do that for a little bit longer -- two days on, one day off. He's swinging well.

Last year, he was incredibly good, and this year he struggled a little bit early. But when it came to crunch time, he started coming on.

We are Houston fans, ... and since I've played there, we've lived there. For us it's long-suffering. Forty-four years of getting close and not getting to the big dance has been a little bit frustrating, so this is a wonderful accomplishment for our city, for our organization, everybody who's been involved with it.

Well, I think Chris is swinging the bat pretty good right now and he has through these playoff games, ... Going with a little bit of a hot hand. This is only a move to do today. I haven't even thought about tomorrow.

The fact of the matter is, he gave up a pretty monstrous home run, ... Best thing we can do is laugh about it, go on with it to the next day and have a little bit of fun with it.

We're a team in a little bit of a transition. But I still expect us to contend. And I didn't even expect us to contend for the pennant last year.

We'll see if it works. Let's do something a little bit different.

We are a different club and we are probably not as offensively as potent as we were last year. We certainly don't have the possibility to break a game open with the long balls like we did last year. We're a little bit younger in our offense, but somehow we found a way. Our pitching is more solid than it was last year from top to bottom. Our bullpen has been good on the balance of the year and having Andy Pettitte healthy has helped our rotation quite a bit. We are probably a little stronger in the pitching department and probably a little weaker in the offense department.

We need to see a little bit better command of his pitches. He's been up in the zone. He needs to get all his pitches low.

We've played a little bit of small ball, it's just not winning. We're making some bad pitches, and they're not missing them, either. When we make mistakes, they hammer them. ... We've been hurt by the long ball, which is uncharacteristic of our pitching staff.

Andy pitched very well. He's actually pitched with more velocity than he had tonight, and a little bit better control, but he's pitched well the whole year.

It was a little bit over the top, but a lot of guys have their styles. The thing of it is, we don't really have anybody on our team who does that. I understand guys have their individuality, but the way to answer that is to beat him.

You've got to try to jump on a pitch early, get something that gets a little bit of the plate. If they make a mistake, you've got to be going after it.

Sometimes, I like to see a guy get beat up a little bit and see how he reacts. I like to see what a guy does when that happens - 'cause you're going to get it every now and then.

I knew we weren't a 15-under-.500 team. When the season started, I thought we were probably five games over .500. Then, if we got a little bit lucky, I thought we could be 10 games over. I think we're fortunate to be 14 over .500 because we didn't figure on Andy Pettitte (17-9, 2.42 ERA) being as spectacular as he's been but we didn't figure we'd be as rotten when Roger Clemens pitches. Go figure.

Oh, I'm just trying to get through tonight. We'll think about that a little bit later. Right now, I don't know what we'll do on Saturday.

The big blow today was Willy. They had us in a little bit of a pickle there.

His consistent play, his consistent hitting all year long -- and he's played pretty solid defense. He had a period in there where a couple of balls gave him a little bit of trouble, but he's been playing a pretty solid defense.

So that felt good when he did that, obviously. I think that took a little bit of pressure off everybody. It made Morgan feel a little better. Of course, it might have led to the three-run homer. Who knows?

It's not something that's totally debilitating. It's there. It grabs him a little bit right when he make his effort to go to the plate.

I feel a little bit more comfortable in the underdog world. I don't know how I feel in the dead role too much. There is a certain amount of satisfaction in proving people wrong. But the truth of the matter is, we did look dead. You can't fault anybody for writing what looks to be the truth.

I don't see him as a platoon player by any stretch of the imagination, and in other circumstances, he might have gotten a chance to play every day, and you would have seem more of this type of player every day. We just didn't have the luxury of letting him fail a little bit along the way to becoming the player that he is.

If he hits a ball hard, you can get him out. If he hits it soft, he'll beat it out every time. He has an incredible burst the last 15 feet or so. There have been six or seven times this season when an umpire will anticipate a little bit and call him out and then realize that he was safe. I got thrown out of a game or two because I got tired of seeing that. I don't know if he's going to win the rookie of the year or not, but there is no doubt he's an exciting player.