Phil Garner Zone Quotations

We're just not getting guys on base, and we're certainly not driving them in when we do. Everybody's frustrated. We've gone two weeks now without really much of an offensive threat. The real problem is that we're not getting the bats in the zone very good right now.

He had us in a hole all night. He found the strike zone and he said, 'hit it,' and we didn't.

I thought Wandy did a super job, ... He must have had some late movement, because he got a lot of ground balls. But he was down in the zone a lot, and in the middle part of the game he went up the zone a little bit.

I said it's going to take a couple of breaks and someone's going to have to bust one long. That was the Hudson that I had seen in previous years in the American League with a good sinking fastball. He was keeping the ball down in the zone and just didn't give us much. And sure enough, we got something going. And Lance (Berkman) comes up with a big boom. Then of course Ausmus with a big boom, too.

I thought his at-bat was a very good at-bat. His bat head was in the hitting zone on the ball he fouled back, and that's a good sign. The guy was throwing pretty good, was varying his speeds. Baggy was able to get the bat head out there.

I thought in the fourth and fifth innings he really battled himself trying to find his release point and got high in the zone and couldn't get the breaking ball where he wanted to.

We missed some pitches that we should have hit, and we expanded the (strike) zone sometimes when we probably shouldn't have. But the bottom line is they did a pretty good job of pitching against us.

Definitely saw him more in the strike zone. I saw him down in the strike zone more and then saw him go up (in the zone) when he wanted to go up. That's what you wanted to see. You want to see him within basically the mitt most of the time.

It's certainly unusual. But how do you figure something like that? He pitched a good game. He located the ball very well at the bottom of the zone and when you do that, you're going to have success.

I don't know if there's a difference in approach, but there's definitely a difference in what he does here. He attacks the zone much better here. He has in the past. ... Perhaps the noise level here, with the roof closed, is what gives him a big plus.