«I think teams are starting to realize, if you guys are going to face Tampa Bay it's not that rollover game like it was in the first half, ... Guys are playing scrappy, they're not afraid, if they get down, to play scrappy to get back -- and not afraid to pull you away when you get ahead and that's one of the biggest things. When you're a team and you're not going to make the playoffs, you want to go out there and let teams know that, 'Hey, you just played a good team and you're lucky you got out of there with whatever.' You want them to remember that it wasn't just 'show up at the park and win.' You want them to know, 'Hey, we just had a very tough series.'»

«Nobody likes to be considered a rollover or a laughingstock. I think guys are taking pride in the notion we can play and compete with some of these teams, so why not? Why end and just mail in the season? Go as hard as you can and mess things up at the top of the standings a little bit while you're in the process.»

«You hear stuff all the time out there, ... I'm not going to use that as an excuse. You hear worse things than maybe somebody trying to call time. It might not help, but it's not the reason why everything happened the way it did.»

«It shouldn't even have gotten to that, ... You go out there with the lead, you've got to come in and put guys away right away. That's a tough way to lose right there.»

«You're going to go through little stretches where things aren't exactly going your way, ... But if you keep going out there making your pitches, you're going to get out of it a lot quicker than always worrying about, 'Why is this happening to me?'»

«It was a slider that didn't slide. It stayed right there on the inner half. It was a nice pitch to hit. I tried to blow it foul, but it stayed true right down the line.»

«Nobody likes to be considered a rollover or a laughingstock,»

«I think guys are taking pride in the notion we can play and compete with some of these teams, so why not? Why end and just mail in the season? Go as hard as you can and mess things up at the top of the standings a little bit while you`re in the process.»

«It was a slider that did not slide. It stayed right there on the inner half. A nice pitch to hit.»

«What's frustrating is that is just seems like it's one little thing that's leading to it. Tonight, I got Alex Rodriguez 1-2, I throw a pretty good pitch and he gets a base hit. One bad pitch in the outing, hey ... Giambi's getting paid a lot of money to hit those balls. You can't make mistakes in that situation.»