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
Shows consistency. But that's what my goal is: trying to be consistent as often as I can. I've said this (before): If you go out and be consistent and give this team a chance to win with the defense, offense and bullpen we have, we're going to win a lot of games.
I thought I was pulling off the ball. I was trying to make the adjustment. I would, and then I'd throw a few pitches to a hitter, and then go right back to it again. So it was just one of those days. For some reason I wasn't able to make the consistent adjustment to keep me where I needed to be, and I battled.
I felt good. I definitely felt better than my last two starts mechanically. My sinker was better. My cutter was better. My command was better. What allowed me to finish the game was taking the ninth like it was the first. If you rush through the ninth trying to get outs, you're not going to complete that game.
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.
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'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.
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.
I didn't make very many good pitches in the second inning,
I'd lie if I don't say that it crosses my mind, ... But those are the things that I might think about for about 30 seconds, and then get rid of them. Because all that is, is stuff in your head that you don't need to think about.