Phil Garner Maybe Quotations

Nobody would've projected him to be as good as he's been. It also leads you to believe that as smart as we are sometimes, maybe it's better sometimes to let players play just to see. Sometimes guys surprise you. Sometimes you misread a player, you just don't know how he's going to respond under pressure situations.

I feel like he's swinging the bat well. I don't want to see him out there at the plate, have three at-bats and maybe be a little tender and maybe do something a little different. We'll give him one more day and hopefully he'll be 100 percent.

He handles everything well, and for a guy who plays maybe once a week, it's tough to do well in a job like that. Pinch-hitting is one of the toughest jobs, you're usually facing somebody tough. It's hard to sit around for three or four days, then try to go up there and get a key at-bat in a critical situation.

We can maybe see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I wanted to get him in, but I would like to have him maybe catch one guy, and that way when we get into these long stretches I won't wear Brad (Ausmus ) out.

After you see that he hit a three-run home run, that's what I'm saying. When you see the outcome of what happened, you say, 'Well, maybe we should've put up four (fingers),' ... I would be stupid to say, 'All right, wait a minute, let me back this up and see if I can't throw a pitch in a little better spot than that and see how much farther he can hit it.'

There was some conversation about maybe taking the rest of the year off and rehabbing his shoulder and getting it strong over the winter. It was Jeff that decided he wanted to do everything he could to get ready to go this year just in case something good happened.

I want him to be in the 15-win range, maybe six or seven games over .500. My only criticism, if I have one, is that he gets behind hitters during the regular season. He doesn't do that in the playoffs because he is aggressive and gets ahead of the hitters.

The interesting thing about him is that Dr. Mac, for all of the bravado about wanting to hold the line on dollars, became the first guy to pay a million dollars to somebody (Ryan). ... Fast-forward a couple of years, and people have somehow forgotten that this guy crossed a barrier that hadn't been crossed and treated Nolan great. I don't know all that went on between Nolan and Mac. OK, maybe it's probably not the bright spot, but it certainly shouldn't be how he's remembered.

In the first part of spring, he was tentative. Then, I thought maybe his third start, he started going right after hitters. He started really being aggressive in the strike zone. Early in the spring, and it could be because he was just getting into shape, but he was middling too much. I saw a change in his demeanor and his results.

In terms of the way I played, I was aggressive, foolish at times, maybe the same way as a manager sometimes. But it doesn't really matter. It's what goes on on the field at any given minute, the players have the ball in their hands.

Clearly he wasn't the Rocket that we've been seeing, ... He's fine. He feels fine. But I think maybe the sticky part of the mound got to him a little bit. It just seemed he never really got in a groove and never really got comfortable.

I'd hoped they would try to be cautious with him and maybe throw something up there and make a mistake and let him hit the ball. They took the bat out of his hands, which I hoped they wouldn't do.