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'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?'

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

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 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.

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.

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.

Nobody likes to be considered a rollover or a laughingstock.