TONY FRANKLIN

On why he didn't feel it necessary, after an ugly 14-12 loss, to chew out his team:

"I think we're past that point. I think we know what we've got, but it's a matter of clicking on all cylinders. My feeling is: We've got a good baseball team. We're in the majority of the games, even a game like this, we're right in it. How many times did we come back today? It would've been very easy for us to say 'to heck with it' and feel sorry for ourselves, but we didn't. "

"That's the one characteristic I really like about this club. There's no quit in these guys. They battle their butts off, even on days when they don't have the best stuff. D.J and Popey and Lance and all those guys have gone out there one time or another when they didn't have their best stuff and they've given us an opportunity to stay in baseball games. "

"We know what we've got, we've just got to find a way to get over that hump of bad luck. We create our own luck for ourselves, and once we do that, I think we'll be OK."

On what he says to D.J. Mitchell after a very rough outing:

"I don't know, I'll think of something. I'll probably try to lighten the moment, I guess, by calling him 'muscles' or something, like I always do. That'll probably lead to some baseball talk. I don't know what happened out there today. He's pretty reliable with throwing strikes, and that's the reason why he's here. I've had teams on the opposition tell me, 'Boy, he's got nasty stuff,' and he does. I don't know what it was, and sometimes you just can't explain it. I'm sure he and Tommy will talk about what happened today to try find and answer and solution, and next time he goes out he'll give you a better outing. "

On whether he thinks Mitchell's confidence may have been affected:

"I don't think there's a confidence issue with any of the guys out here. I don't think they're down, and I don't think it's a confidence issue. They may be guilty of overthinking sometimes. That's when it becomes a problem, when you're out there thinking about what you're trying to do, rather than just going out there in pitching Maybe they're guilty of that a little bit, but as far as confidence, I don't see that. I don't see that at all.

On why he kept Mitchell in while he was getting hit hard:

"Let's see if we can get the guy through the fifth inning. If we win this thing, and he's the pitcher of record, that would be great. We tried to get him through the fifth inning and he didn't. Their guy didn't stay in very long either. It happens from time to time. When you have games like this, when the pitchers start to rack up pitches, you start wondering how deep you're going to go into your bullpen, because there is a game tomorrow and the next day and the next day. You have to be a little careful."

D.J. MITCHELL:
On what happened overall:

"They hit the ball. I fell behind in the count, they took advantage of it. They hit some good pitches. It's definitely not the outing I'm looking for; my team put up plenty of runs for me. I didn't keep my team in the ballgame, and that's what my job is to do."

On whether any specific pitch wasn't working:

"I'm not going to say my location was perfect with every pitch, but I actually felt pretty comfortable with all my pitches. I tip my hat, they did a good job. If I made a mistake, they hit it and they hit it well. That's just the way it goes. I have to get better from there."

On whether, after a wild first inning, he got a sense the game might deteriorate:

"No, I really didn't think that at the time. I knew after that first inning that I just needed to settle down. I did put up a zero the next inning. My team, they played well and they battled. They put some runs up for me. They had a chance to get me off the hook, but I kept giving up the lead. It was just a bad day altogether."

On whether he's worried about his status in the rotation or on the Thunder in general:

"I'm not going to think about that. I'm just going to take it day by day. I'll keeping doing my sides, my bullpens each day, keep going to the weight room. Same routine for me unless I hear something different, then it'll change."