Link: Philly.com: At plate, behind plate, Pratt catches fire, by Ted Silary.
Good teammate that he is, Pratt at first rebuffed the media's effort to get him to discuss his performance. In fact, he said right away, "Let's talk more about Brett."
That would be righthander Brett Myers, now 3-2 with a 1.63 earned run average after allowing five hits and striking out eight over seven innings. Aaron Fultz and Robinson Tejeda finished the win with an inning apiece.
Pratt, who debuted in the majors in '92, said that Myers is one of the best pitchers he has ever caught and that his four pitches (among them a recently added cutter) are so nasty, they're borderline difficult to catch.
He also suggested, before backing off slightly, that the media were unfair last season in their treatment of Myers (11-11, 5.52) and have inspired him to pitch so well.
Brett, your thoughts on this?
"Definitely... I want to stick it up the media's ass," he said, stone-faced. "And all the people who doubted me."
Next, Myers was asked to comment on the fact that so many are calling for Manuel's head so quickly into his stint.
"People can open their mouth all they want and see what they want to see," Myers said. "But they don't know the behind-the-scenes stuff. Half the people sayin' that don't know a frickin' thing about baseball. They're just lettin' their lips run."
If we're being fair, I think most of the Phlogosphere should bend over for Brett too. I know that I, for one, advocated in the offseason that Myers should be bumped from the rotation and/or traded. I had pretty much written him off.
This is certainly an instance where I am glad I was wrong.
After last night's start, Myers is ranked third in all of baseball in ERA (1.63), and second in the NL in innings pitched and strikeouts. Those are pretty large statistics to be cramming into orifices of any kind.
