Here is Mark DeRosa, speaking after the game, on the dumpage of Miguel Tejada and Aaron Rowand. I quote DeRosa because, although he is not a key member of the Giants, he is a key spokesman. Every team has one of those guys – a designated talker who articulately puts things in perspective. Here goes.

What message does the dumpage give the team?

Something had to be done. That’s not to say it falls on Miggy or Aaron. I just feel we worked too hard and put in too much time for three quarters of the season to just watch us play that brand of ball for 30 days straight. It just wasn’t acceptable, wasn’t acceptable for the guys playing and it wasn’t acceptable for the guys sitting and watching. It’s a veteran-laden team with a lot of veterans on the bench. Maybe they feel they can jump-start us, infuse some younger guys in, just try and get a different look out there. I feel if we stayed stagnant the same things were going to keep happening. I like it from the standpoint that I don’t feel like we’re out of it. We control our own destiny to a certain degree. If we play well against Arizona to start the month off, then they know we’re not going anywhere. We won the World Series last year. They’ve got a lot of young guys over there. We’ve got to push them.

Did he expect Tejada and Rowand to be the ones to go?

For whatever reason, production or lack of playing time, they just felt a move needed to be made.

When did he become aware of the moves?

This morning, when I got to the field, I saw Miggy on his way out and said goodbye to him and I thought that was the only move. I didn’t know Aaron was involved until he came up to me. It’s not an easy day. We’re all competitors and we all fight hard but at the end of the day it’s a business and we’ve played a bad brand of ball for the last month and it’s unacceptable and I think the front office and the coaches are sending that message loud and clear to us.

Will today’s win help?

I hope it gets us going. I hope Huffy having a day off gets him going. I see it as six games is not insurmountable. Arizona, we’ve got to play them twice. We’ve played as poor as we can play for the last month and our pitchers have still toed the rubber and done a heck of a job for us. It’s a chance for some young guys and some veterans who have been waiting their turn to get a chance. We’ve been in this position before. We have a lot of the same guys. We’ll fight. And at the end of the day, I like our pitching staff better than anyone’s in baseball. We’ve just got to score runs.

 

 

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