Tony Russa Guys Quotations

Mentally, is closing tougher than a hitter going out there with 600 at-bats to produce ... tougher than a starting pitcher? For the great closer, it's as tough. He watches the club for eight innings. Then if he goes out there and screws it up, he's got 24 guys to answer to. It's a heck of a deal. Some guys can't handle it.

Guys like Derrek Lee and Albert Pujols and other guys at the top, Miguel Cabrera , nobody throws the ball down the middle to them, ... So they have to work hard to get everything, and they deserve all the credit.

Guys took their place and did a terrific job with the bats and we were pitching well. We don't have Scott back, but we have Larry and Reggie back. Both of those guys can handle a bat, so you don't push as much with them as you would with some of the other guys.

I feel like in that series, just like all year long, when things got tense, each of those guys made pitches, and we kept the lead,

Hung in there? You don't just hang in there when you limit them to two runs with all those opportunities. When he had guys on base, he was outstanding.

He fits in. One of the things we believe about our club is we have a bunch of guys who are prime-timers, who are not afraid to take big at-bats.

My point was (Saturday) that amidst all the runs, both of the guys did a lot of good things. (Sunday), Wainwright pitched well, but he made a couple mistakes that he got away with.

I watch the outfield and how neat it is to have guys playing for their lives. You watch those drills, there's a lot in those drills. When you have an outfield that's set they're getting the kinks out.

Our role guys have become our feature players.

The whole point about resting guys is all academic as of this week because we've got days off, and I don't have to rest anybody,

When we've got into some kind of adversity, when we've had to go left or right, up or down, it's been good for us. And the reason that it's worked that way is that these guys have been very strong-minded, very tough-minded about not conceding anything.

I've answered this question every time exactly how I believe it, and that is that we had the luxury of a crooked-number lead, and the responsibility of our relievers were No. 1: Get outs. But No. 2: Don't give them any cheap opportunities, which means walking guys because you're being too fine,

I'm just excited that both of the guys are playing well. That's the best part about second base. The thing about Luna is he's got so much versatility. He can play in the outfield tomorrow if we really want him to.

If you could look ahead knowing those key guys would miss so much time, you'd really stretch to think you could pull it off.

If you look at last year, we had Scott playing and he had some really big hits, but overall he was really banged up, he wasn't the same the last two months, ... This year we lost four regulars, three of them are boppers, and the guys that took their place did a terrific job of handling the bat, so we played a little different game.

I want to make sure Al Reyes gets the credit he deserves, but you don't want to speak so much about that and pretty soon it sounds like we can't win without him, ... That's an important miss for us, but we have other guys who can step up.

If you return a lot of the strong nucleus, year to year, for two or three years, I think that'd be an exception. There's too many free agents, there are times money forces you to make decisions to not tender (contracts to) guys who all of a sudden become too expensive. You're trying to prioritize how to spend your money, and everybody faces it.

Any of you guys that cast any kind of negative implication on Albert, you ought to be ... ashamed of yourselves.

You've got to make a commitment to playing the game that way, ... That doesn't just happen. That's the way our guys play the game.

The guy who doesn't go into the rotation is going to have a tough pill to swallow. All five guys are very competitive and very proud off their contributions. It's going to be tough to take.

You can't have an outstanding bullpen without an outstanding closer, unless one of those guys in your legitimate bullpen becomes a closer. You build it around your closer.