Is this the defining road trip?

This wasn’t the way we wanted to come into this road trip. We really wanted to take two of three this weekend and come to Chicago on a roll.  

This could be the defining road trip of our season.  We really have to play well to beat the Cubs and the Angels.  We’re hoping to end our struggles on the road.  

People keep asking how we can play so good at home and so bad on the road.  Really I don’t know what it is.  

I think we’ve just got to finish things off. When we score runs, we have to keep trying to score more runs and bury them.  I don’t know if we get complacent.  But it seems like we kind of die or just expect our bullpen to hold them.

We can’t do that, especially on the road.  At home we always feel like we can come back.  Other teams feel that way too.  We’ve got to do a better way of burying that optimism.

I think a lot of us are looking forward to Chicago.  I love the fans, the food and the drink.  They’ve got great everything.  It’s a place where you can relax and have fun.  When you wake up, you know that you’re going to get to play in a cool stadium and in a cool city. It’s just a lot of fun.

But for this road trip to really be fun we’re going to have to play well in Chicago, Anaheim and Texas.  We’re not taking the Rangers lightly.  They have a great offense.  

We just have to turn things around and make sure this is a good trip.

Now its time to win on the road

It’s been great to have another successful homestand and gain even more confidence about playing at home. I know that we have the best home record in the National League and when September comes that could be big. Just knowing that we play well here might help us win some important games.

We want to get out on this road trip and start playing with some more consistency. Going 1-4 on the last road trip was unacceptable mainly because we won the first game. That’s just not going to cut it.

We’ve got four games in Pittsburgh and then three really big games in Philadelphia. It’s hard to imagine we’re six weeks into the season and we still haven’t seen the Phillies. Last year, we’d seen them like nine times by now.

I remember going to Cincinnati in August last year with still a good chance to make the postseason. Then we lost three of four. That was bad because those were games that we thought we matched up well. When we go to Pittsburgh this weekend, we have to make sure we take advantage of the games where we match up well.

Going to Philadelphia will be fun because it’s always a tough place to play. Everybody seems to be focusing on the Mets and Phillies right now. We want to show them that we’ll be right there with them for the entire season.