Ron Gardenhire Runs Quotations

This was a good win for us. To come out and score some runs and get a lead, we haven't done that very often. It was fun. The guys got to run the bases.

Last season, we hurt ourselves on the relays throwing home and balls getting through the infield. We just can't give away runs with this pitching staff. It's too good. So we needed that type of strong defense.

I still think he runs a little ginger at times. But he's doing everything he has to do. I'm never going to say never until we get down to the end of spring training. I think you just leave your options open.

I think the correlation that, 'Well, we really struggled on the road without this guy and that guy' ? that's so sad. We scored how many runs in Toronto? Thirteen runs? What, was (Oliva) on the phone?

We did everything we could, ... You're in a pennant race. ... We're trying to win. Five runs in two innings -- you can't go with that.

We actually scored six runs out there today, and most of the time when we score six that's good enough for our pitching to stop them. It just didn't work today. They were swinging, and we didn't make enough good pitches.

We definitely need those guys to hit, that's the middle of the lineup. We need our middle guys to start banging the runs around.

We're in a pennant race here, ... We're doing everything we can to win. And five runs in two innings, we can't do that.

Three runs in seven innings, that's pretty good pitching, really. He pitched his tail off. Hernandez just pitched better. We didn't swing the bats well tonight. We hit a few balls hard. He definitely shut us down. It was a disappointing night for us.

We were facing one of the better righthanders in the league tonight. We knew it was going to be tough, runs would be at a premium. He made it really tough on us. We really didn't have many opportunities.

Offensively, we didn't do too much. But we scored the runs when we had to.

Baker was fantastic. He used his breaking ball, his changeup and had the high fastball working. He located pretty good. He gave us a great chance to win. It's unfortunate we couldn't score enough runs for him. Rincon came in and had two good innings for us, got out of the one, which was huge. Then we finally come up with the big base hit.

Any time you get a chance to win a series, that's what it's all about. We had a chance to sweep them here but they played well, they came back and jumped on us early and got some runs off Lohse in the first four innings and then held a lead.

It's unfortunate we're not scoring enough runs for him. He's the best left-hander in this league, there's no doubt in my mind. And, he may be the best pitcher.

Home runs are going to come. He'll learn to take a pitch and drive it out of the ballpark. We don't really need to tell him what to do.

We missed an opportunity to score runs for Santana and maybe get him a win. Which is probably the most disappointing thing for the night.