Dave Esquer Quotations

If we're going to be the team we need to be, we need them both.

Sixty percent of the time, if he makes an out then we're stuck waiting for an extra-base hit from the guys behind him. It's just the proper play. It's kind of by the book, but this is a team game and we have to rely on more than just Allen Craig.

I feel for the kid. He needs at least a little luck.

What we would have to do to make it is almost impossible to do if you think about it. But one game at a time, it's a lot more manageable. It's tough to sweep anybody on Friday.

He's had his share of well-hit balls that were outs and they're all working against him. So it was nice to see a couple fall for him because he's had to stomach a few hard ones that didn't fall.

He's close. He's real close. It's just getting into game rhythm-that's all that is. It's not his technique, it's not his ability. You've got to get in a rhythm of competition and it just takes a while for someone to get started.

Jordan hasn't played in a long time, and he really sparked us today. That's what we're looking for when we're moving guys in and out of the lineup. We're looking for that spark.

Our middle of the lineup and our average with runners in scoring position just haven't been that good. We haven't given our pitching staff any margin for error yet, and that's been a little frustrating.

I think they're coming around. We strike out four or fewer times per game, and that's excellent. It's a whole lot easier to get yourself hitting if you're already (making contact) than to get yourself hitting from striking out. If we continue to push and feel positive, it'll happen if we make it happen.

Josh had one of his best offensive days when he played second base at Davis. And whether it's psychological or not, we tried it out just to see, and he did well today. He looked much better at the plate.

Our goal is to just develop some consistency, so we know when we come out to the ballpark how we're going to play. We haven't done that except for pitching and good defense. We've had a hard time getting going offensively.

I think it's indicative of a young team that hasn't matured yet that we play to the level of our competition. We've got to establish some consistency. We obviously know what we're capable of at our best, and we're not at our best.

We don't have a true closer right now, so we're going to play the hot hand. We're kind of forced to play the hot hand and let it roll until it starts to falter, and unfortunately it did.

Those are our staples-we pitch and play defense. That's about as many errors as we've made in a game all year, especially at home.

Time's getting short. But if it happens for a short while, there's going to be some satisfaction in there.

We still haven't met up with any warm weather, so we're still waiting to thaw out a little bit. That's not an excuse, but hopefully we hit some good weather.

We've won three out of our four (conference) series, but unfortunately one bad weekend in league can hurt you. Two one-run losses and one big-series loss and we're still trying to recover from that.

We're not playing our best yet, so that's a little concerning. We'll have to gain some of that momentum in the conference rather than prior to.

We're going to pitch a lot of guys and kind of have a staff day-a bunch of guys pitching an inning or two apiece. We're going to get some guys some game experience that they're going to need in these coming weekends.

We're starting to believe a little bit. We're starting to believe in our bats a little bit, and it's taken a long time to get there. That's big for us.

We've all had some good outings and some highs in the short season so far. Now it's just a matter of repeating those and stringing together some more of those good wins.

Thinking of the long season, it's better to hold him out than to risk injury. I don't know if (his absence) was a factor, but obviously not having one of your starters out there can hurt you.

While we gave up more runs than we've been used to, we've still got to score runs too. We just haven't been able to put it all together at any one time.

We've got to get some of these big guys going to take some of the pressure off of our pitching. We've done a good job keeping the score down, but unfortunately runs have been hard to come by.

It was tough today. On days like today this park can keep games a lot closer than they should be.

We've got a lot of respect for them and we know that we'll have to play our best to win.

Some players have to play and have to play well for us to be the team we want to be.

Our defense has made seven errors in the last three games. I don't think we've made seven errors all year. (Ross) had a stomach flu the night before, so we were lucky that he could even pitch. It was a good effort on his part and we made a couple mistakes that cost him.

There's someone who's going to be very motivated to do well against his hometown team.

These guys aren't going to go down easy. We scrambled, we used everyone we had, and it worked out great for us.

It's just for a different look. It's just to see the rhythm of how things fall when the lineup turns over and to see how guys fall just to give me an idea of how things flow.

We're going to be in a hostile environment against a very good team. It's going to take us rising to the level of our competition (to win).

It's about us-we've got to play well (for) ourselves. If we play at our highest level and (Stanford) plays well, we'll take our chances.

A break like this can work either way. You can hit the ground running or you can play like you haven't played in four weeks.

It's going to be a gauge for us, and it's going to be a big gauge.

It's going to give us an idea of where we're at and what we need to improve on. It will by no means define our season, because we feel that our best days are yet ahead of us and we've got to get ourselves playing to that level.

They played well. We had plenty of opportunities, and we just couldn't do it. We give ourselves opportunities to win, but we haven't had enough consistency to really get us on a roll.

How they act during this time means a lot. It's just been one of those strange years where things go a lot differently than we expected. Who knows, maybe the story of the season is in front of us.

I'd rather be anywhere if the weather would turn better. We haven't played in good weather yet-we've been dodging rain and cold everywhere we've been. Hopefully our bats will warm up once the weather starts to get warm here, but they haven't yet.

The makeup of the lineup doesn't really make that much of a difference other than where you put Allen Craig. He's been driving in the most runs and getting on base the most. Unfortunately he can't hit one and three.