When I gave that compliment last year, ... I was hoping that he was going to retire.

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,

He gave me the thumbs up. He goes.

That changes things dramatically. He made one mistake - he got (LaRue), 0-2, then gave him something to bunt. You throw him something nasty there and you don't get an advance.

That's how he pitched early in the year. He just got in a funk. In the middle of that funk, he had a couple of games like this and we couldn't score for him. ... This is what he's capable of doing.

What's different about this club, when you have this many setbacks, it's usually part of why you don't win or you barely squeeze by in the last week of the season with a good but not great record. To have this kind of run and play this quality of baseball for this long is why this club deserves a very different kind of credit.