27 Quotes by Russ Ortiz

After I sat down and thought about it, I learned a lot about the game, about myself.

The most important thing is that I'm able to throw all my pitches for strikes.

It was the magnitude of the situation, in a game that was absolutely huge for us. We're not a team that shows a lot of emotion, and that's not a bad thing. But that situation was big.

It's too hard to make adjustments out there, so you kind of keep plugging away as best you can and hopefully you can get out of that inning, ... Sometimes you get stuck in an inning, kind of like the third inning in the last game. I couldn't get out of it. That's what I've always been able to do, is work through an inning.

It just wasn't there, for whatever reason. I did the best I could to fight through it, but it just wasn't there at all.

I made seven mistakes today. I got hit hard. What are you going to do? I wasn't very happy, obviously, to put us in that situation, but at the same time I guess it could have been a lot worse.

I never claimed to be anything other than the type of pitcher that I am, which is to go out and battle as hard as I can to get a win. And it worked. Everybody wants to harp on last year, but I was gone for the heart of the year, hurt.

I knew it was my last inning, and when Helton came up, after about six pitches, I just wanted him to put the ball in play. I started trying to be too fine with pitches, and trying to throw the ball in a good spot over the plate that maybe he'd put in play. But it was good to be able to be stretched out like that. It was nice to get up and down five times.

I'll throw off the mound and see where it's at. . . . We're going to evaluate it. Keep throwing and see how it feels.