Chris Carpenter
Chris Carpenter
Christopher John "Chris" Carpenteris an American retired professional baseball starting pitcher. He played 15 seasons in Major League Baseballfor the Toronto Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals from 1997 to 2012. A Cy Young Award winner and two-time World Series champion, he was also a three-time All-Star selection. In addition, he was twice named the Sporting News National League Pitcher of the Year, and voted for a number of Comeback Player of the Year awards for surmounting injury...
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth27 April 1975
CityExeter, NH
We've got a great club, ... We've got to continue to play the way we've been playing in this series to continue to move on.
I think the toughest thing this year is going to be to continue to do what I did last year, and that's being mentally strong every fifth day and to be able to be consistent. Am I going to win as many games? I don't know. But I believe the mental part of the game, if I continue to do the things I did last year, the success I had was because of that.
When you're trying to learn and establish yourself and be consistent in the major leagues, it's hard to do that with the amount of pressure everybody from the outside is putting on you. But obviously all three of us were able to continue to be successful, move on and do the things everybody expected us to be able to do.
If you go out there relaxed, you're going to give up runs. You have to go out and continue to compete and make pitches.
I just try to continue to go out and give my team a chance to win. With the defense and offense we have playing behind me, you're going to win a lot of ballgames.
Each start is a new start, a new game, ... I can't take anything from the last game into this next one except to continue to try to throw strikes down in the strike zone. I feel like my stuff is pretty good and I feel like I was able to control counts and I'm going to try to do that again.
I try not to let it enter my mind because, again, we've got a long way to go, ... We've got a month left. I've got to go out and continue to compete for the rest of the month, and our main goal is to give ourselves a chance to be in the playoffs.
When you do that it's tough for them to elevate the ball.
We've got to forget about tonight. We didn't win it tonight, we just won one game.
You hope that you win. But when you're talking about the quality of seasons those other guys had, there's nothing you can say about it (if someone else won).
We had that last year, we have that this year.
We clinched and there was nothing on the line anymore,
We have five guys who have been here before. At this point in the season, if you don't have a guy on the mound who believes that he can be that No. 1 guy, you're not going to have a whole lot of success. We have five guys who can go out there and win at any time.
I got my work in and I'm ready to go. I kept the ball down.