Eric Chavez Quotations

(Perry) suggested a couple of things. For me the game is mental. I have to conquer the mental part of the game. Once I do that, I'll be where everybody expects me to be.

There's not one of us who felt we shouldn't have put five or six runs on the board,

The tournament is a great idea. Even if I don't end up playing, I'm excited about watching it on TV.

I started scoreboard-watching three or four weeks ago; that's when you know things are starting to get interesting. It's not a burden to be playing for the playoffs. This is the time of the year when every game counts, every pitch counts. It's an honor to be able to play for something when other teams are making vacation plans.

The better teams are obviously in the American League. It's tough, but it makes for good baseball. Now the National League has to do some work to catch up. There's no doubt in my mind the top five, six teams are from the American League.

The basic message was that he thinks this is a really special group of guys, and I couldn't agree more.

He's a motivator, I've found. He's already come up and said, 'Eric, this is going to be your best year ever,' and he's always talking about getting your mind right for April 1.

Sometimes you really do have to tip your cap to the other guy. I mean, Colon is a legitimate Cy Young type of guy, and Lackey is right up there in the league in strikeouts. But tonight, we should have scored some runs off this guy. The rest of the league does. We're the only team the guy shuts out.

He was throwing strikes with his off-speed pitches. That is fine the first few times through the order. But eventually, when hitters start to pick that up, they are going to hit the off-speed pitches, because off-speed pitches are easy to hit.

It's always been kind of intense but it's always been clean, too. I like every guy over there. There's not a guy I don't like. But I'm sure this won't be the end of it, that's for sure.