Max Scherzer Quotes

The game changes when you play good defense and don't come up with the ball.

I cant think of anything more humiliating than losing a ballgame to a guy who steals home on you. It happened to me one time against Kansas City. I had a 2-2 count on the hitter - and Amos Otis broke from third. The pitch was a ball and slid in safe. I felt like a nickel.

My approach every game is to try to keep the ball down and get ground ball outs.

A lot of guys are offensive minded, which is good at some points and times but bad at others - at lots of others. I wish I could say I want everybody to play defense as hard as I do. It's not a reality.

There's two facets of this game. You know, if I'm not making shots, OK, then I have to do something on defense. So if I'm missing shots or making shots, it doesn't affect my overall game.

Sometimes, I, anyway, get tired of playing defence, and like to play offence.

You've gotta play a head game; especially blocking shots, you've gotta make it hard. You're playing against the best of the best: they're not gonna go straight to the basket, do a layup. You've gotta lure them into some shots.

My goal is simple - try and make sure my guy doesn't score. And if he does, make sure it's a contested two, or a tough shot.

You can't afford to hop around and act like a kid when you have to get back on defense and worry about the other parts of the game. But at the end, when the buzzer sounds, you have the luxury of hopping around and looking foolish for a while.

Teams that just play on one side of the floor are going to struggle against defenses that load up on that side.

Because the hash marks are narrower in the pros, the ball's always closer to the middle of the field. So if you're a defensive back, you can wait a lot longer before committing to a certain part of the field.

Even though I am not going to coach in the future, if I had to pass on a recommendation, it would be to base your game on having a strong defence.

I think the thing with our team is during the postseason, our best games that we've played during the postseason, we strung at-bats together. It's not necessarily going up there trying to hit a home run, but it's trying to put up a good at-bat for the next guy.

Not all players want to play defense. You get in foul trouble, you're going to be on the bench.

Of course you don't want to concede a goal in any game.

You used to be taught to let the ball go as far as possible and then drop it on the runner, whereas now it might be even more advantageous to direct the ball in front of the bag and get the guy on the leg.

The more carries you get, the better you see the field, see the way that the defense is playing you.

If I can't help the team offensively, I can help defensively.

Playing an ultra-defensive side is very difficult.

I stay in the middle and my team-mates can go to attack.

Whoever I'm playing against, I go in and try to stop their best scorer and try to get myself going on the offensive end.

A lot of the better offenses sacrifice defense to be a good offense and I'm not interested in doing that.

You don't want to give the defensive back any signals about what route you're going to run.

In New England, I learned so much about football. I always thought I was a smart player, even though I never thought about anything but the six inches in front of my face. In New England, I was forced to learn so many schematic concepts.

Some big teams prefer to be very strong defensively and have two, three, four counter-attacking players.