Phil Garner Quotes (397 Quotes)

One of my pet peeves obviously is missing the cutoff guy, because that's obviously something we can control. The bottom line is Bruntlett plays hard, he showed up tonight, and he made two fantastic plays.

That's a good baseball play right there. Biggio was running hard out of the box going to second, so it creates a little diversion there, and Willy was coming hard the whole way.

We are Houston fans, ... and since I've played there, we've lived there. For us it's long-suffering. Forty-four years of getting close and not getting to the big dance has been a little bit frustrating, so this is a wonderful accomplishment for our city, for our organization, everybody who's been involved with it.

You can live with some strikeouts when you're going to have a lot of power.

Houston Astros' manager Phil Garner had Hurricane Rita on his mind as it bore down on the Texas Gulf Coast on Wednesday. I talked to my neighbor, and he's leaving, ... My goodness, that thing is big. It's just going to be ugly for us.

I said, 'You look at it again and you'll see you're wrong,' ... He said, 'I will look at it.' I'll have to call him and tell him he was right. I'll have to eat a little crow.

He's just different. He does those kinds of things, and it becomes a competition. He's going to challenge you.

I guess somebody brought it up today -- if you don't win today's game, it's probably over.

There's several great points from our standpoint in that game. It was Backe's first time back, and he kept us in the ballgame. And Wandy Rodriguez, who has been a starter, he goes out and gives us one inning and kind of bridges our bullpen.

This team has a lot of character. And as someone who has lived in Houston a long time, I know how long our fans have been waiting for this and how much it means to them. They've earned it.

A lot of these kids get a free pass until you get to a certain point. Then, when you get to a certain point, that's where you find out who can play. ... There's a culture of losing that gets into the system and no matter how hard you fight it, it's there. No one wants to talk about it, but it's there.

I think Lamb is a very good hitter, ... I've let Lamb hit in that situation many times.

The beautiful thing about our game to manage (is) you learn on the job. We've been through all the experiences. You're not asking the players to do something we ourselves haven't done. He'll draw on those experiences, and I think he'll do quite fine.

He has not been used a lot recently. He needed to throw tonight, so he was going to have to go. I actually debated bringing him in in the seventh if we had gotten in trouble. He was going to have to work hard tonight.

Biggio made his mind up. He knew what he wanted to do. The kid made a good throw. You have to give him credit. Most guys will get thrown out if people make good throws. You don't see it that often. They made two good throws actually. He hit the cutoff man, and Weeks took care of the rest of it.

It might some pitchers, and it didn't rattle Roy, ... I thought tonight he was as composed as I've ever seen him.

When you go into an organization that's been losing and you try to change the culture, it's a difficult job. It requires absolute faith from ownership. You've got to do some things on the field with your personnel that people don't like. But you've got to do it if you're going to turn it around.

You're like, 'Am I supposed to feel this nervous and scared' Then you talk to other guys and realize that everybody goes through that. The key is to talk about it and learn how to channel it.

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

I think Rocket and Andy really like being on the big stage. They sort of feed off that a little bit. Roy doesn't shy down from it at all, but his personality is just much more low-key.

I think it helped that our offense was aggressive from the start and our pitching has just slammed the door in their faces when we've gotten ahead in this series.

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.

These are our best umpires, and it's not an exact science. I don't know that you can make it an exact science.

I don't think we need any more incentive than we already have. We're an organization that has never been to the World Series. That's plenty of incentive right there.

It's not been a position he's been playing a lot in pro ball, so I wouldn't say it's a given that you pick it right back up, but once you get on a bike you still know how to ride it, I would think. He's looked pretty smooth the couple of times he's been behind the plate for me.

That was a surprise. We haven't seen that from Oswalt. He struggled with his command and just didn't look comfortable in that first inning. This is very much uncharacteristic of the way he's pitched.

You just have to trust your scouts in that regard.

I'm proud of these guys, we played hard, ... I'm disappointed and I'm ticked off that we didn't win a game in this World Series, but I'm proud of our players.

We've had problems with the Cardinals, no question. We've just got to buckle down now and play some good ball. We're still in control of our destiny.

He just made outstanding plays and very smart plays, so there's no reason why he's not on track there. The first time you're out there, sometimes you over-try. I remember him saying the upper deck gave him a little bit of trouble at times. There's no reason why he can't have another good showing.

He might jump right in and be able to take off. If you don't have an injury, you can get ready a lot quicker. ... I might look back at the first part of the season and say, 'Well, we needed another five days.' Right now, I don't know. We'll get him to pitch even if it's over in the Minor Leagues. If he ends up being the better candidate, he moves to the head of the class.

A high payroll guarantees you wins. It doesn't guarantee you championships. If you let me spend 100 million or more every year, I guarantee you I'll play over .500.

He did a fine job today. He did a nice job. He threw strikes, used his pitches well. He did a marvelous job. Boy, did we need it.

It's not a distraction, nor is it a negative factor.

We got on the field and got some work done, a lot of ground balls and fly balls. We got those skills taken care of today. We missed our fundamentals but we'll still be able to double up (today) and get back on track.

They'll let Jimmy control the clubhouse, and he'll get the backing from the front office because of his good relationship with Dombrowski from their time together with the Marlins.

I think they're really good. Probably right on track. So we've got time to get them both ready and we can do that.

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.

My bat head was there, which means I can get to the pitch. But against a guy who throws that hard, you need to get your bat down because you can't elevate the pitch.

While the World Baseball Classic is going on, we do not have to adhere to that. We'll call it the Yankee rule. They never did adhere to it, anyway.

If you mentioned the names of Qualls and Wheeler and Springer, it doesn't exactly make people shudder. Most people don't know who they are.

To me, Mulder is a big plus. Carpenter is coming off a great season and strong as ever. And I think (Matt) Morris is probably in better shape right now than he was last year at this time when we faced him I think their pitching is pretty solid.

He did a very nice job. He had a pretty nice fastball and was locating it pretty well, and they just stayed with it all night long. It was kind of an unusually pitched game. You don't see a guy use primarily fastballs. He had a little life on it.

He did not go to his mouth. He was sweating profusely on his face. He wiped his eyebrow across his nose, and (Dreckman) called it on his face. It was a bad call, plain and simple.

Phil Garner 's wife, Carol, was struck on the wrist last week by a bat that went sailing into the stands. But Mrs. Scrap Iron is going to be OK. She just got a bruise, ... Just sore. She's never been able to go on the DL.

Nobody pitches better in the playoffs than he does. My one criticism, and I only have one, is he pitches behind hitters too much in the regular season and he doesn't seem to do that in the playoffs.

We made the lead hold up. Myers settled down after that. Myers started making his pitches and looked pretty good. The good news is our pitching staff held it. It turned out to be a big win for us.

People are still going to pick the Cardinals, and that's OK. I think people are looking at the Cardinals' starting staff as their rotation might be the best, and it might very well be.

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.

Obviously my last memory was not a good one. We'd like to have a chance to switch that around.