More Showalter after 13-3 loss

Manager Buck Showalter covered other topics today besides Nick Markakis' surgery on Tuesday. Here are a few of them: On Zach Britton: "His command was challenged. He was carrying good stuff. They did a real good job of making him bring the ball up, which a lot of people have tried to do, and Zach is usually able to throw strikes down in the zone. Zach was missing by a length of a ball, and he wasn't getting much borderline. Unfortunately, for him, most of the hits off him were broken bats and choppers. He walked some people, and you can't walk that many people against that type of lineup." On whether Britton was affected by the ball that glanced off his glove and hit his face: "I don't think so. That would be an easy thing. He was laughing about it. Hit on his glove. Certainly didn't feel good. Didn't help matters. He was having some command issues before he got hit." On splitting the four-game series: "We'd like to have taken four out of four. We'd like to have taken all seven games against them. Today when we got back to 5-3, we had a pretty good run there. Wilson (Betemit) and Matty (Wieters) got us back in it. We just couldn't stem the tide there. That's something to reflect on, probably after the season. Our guys were disappointed a bit with today, but we'll regroup over the very much-deserved off-day for our guys and see where we are." On whether he learned anything about his club after an intense series with New York: "The Yankees don't have a corner on intensity in games. Nobody does. That city doesn't. We have it here in Baltimore. They have it in Kansas City. I don't think anything has to happen here. The only thing it would do is verify my feelings. Nothing happened out there. ... I feel real good about our players and the things we went through. I kind of cringe when people say it was like war because that's not respectful to people who have actually been in them. We played four, really seven tough battles with these guys. We won four out of seven. We'd like to have won all seven and I'm real proud of them." On the upcoming series against Tampa Bay: "You can make a case they're as good as any pitching staff in baseball. Runs are going to be at a premium and our pitching staff is going to have to match some good outings that they're going to throw at you. Right now, they're scheduling [Matt} Moore. We didn't get [David] Price on one of those days. Good club. There's a reason. We look at it as a given that they're going to be in it through thick and thin. Even when the season started, we knew that with that pitching over the course of a season that they were going to. ... They do a lot of good things other than pitch. Sometimes, it gets lost in the shuffle." On going 9-9 vs. the Yankees: "I'm proud of the way our guys competed against them. It's a given with some of the resources that they're always going to be competitive. Some people think that's good for baseball. I'm not going to jump on that wagon. You go in that clubhouse and you poll our guys and see how many know what our record was against the Yankees. They want to know what our record is against the Yankees when the season is over, the 162 games."