Notes from Gibby's chat with the media in his office before the game:
- With Juan Gutierrez, Gibby talked about his closer situation. Sort of. Basically, he'll throw him in there where ever he feels best.
- The lineup change for this game was for two reasons: a) to balance the lefties and righties in the order and to shake things up a bit. Specially, moving Upton up to 2nd was designed to take some pressure off him. Gibby even considered hitting Justin in the lead-off spot just to change his approach and help with his "pressing" issue.
- Line up: Drew, Upton, Johnson, LaRoche, Reynolds, Montero, Parra
- Gibby talked about J-Up dealing with his slump and get over pressing. "It's a big part of the game. It's part of maturing. It's part of conquering really what the game of baseball is. It's something I struggled with for awhile, a long time, and you're always going to have times when things don't go well. You've got to find a way to get through it without going in the deep-freeze. He still hits the ball decently but I watched him last night and he really put a lot of pressure on himself."
- Chris Young has made a lot of progress from being a pure pull hitter to being able to go opposite field. Last season he couldn't even hit on a line the other way in batting practice, this year he's made a lot of improvement.
- "If you look at it right from the set-up and just the mechanics of his lower half. I think that he used to drift a lot and now he keeps his front foot and stay back and stay ready. Just in a better position to attack offspeed pitches, balls away..."
- Gibby gave Chris credit for working on it and then staying with it. He said a lot of times you make an adjustment and struggle with it early and bail on it.
- Reynolds getting hit in the head was set back but, according to his manager, if Mark is going to have less than 200 strikeouts and have 120-130 RBI he's going to have to fix the mechanics of his swing.
- Gibby said when he went home last night he felt he didn't do a good job managing the bullpen.
- Hudson's been working on his slider a lot and he threw several good one's but gave up a homerun on a slider that hung up.