Roenicke insists Brewers haven't quit

WASHINGTON -- Manager Ron Roenicke forcefully disputed the latest Major League scout to criticize the Brewers' hustle, insisting he's seen no signs of quit despite his team's spot in the National League Central cellar.

Roenicke made his comments in response to a column by FoxSports.com's Ken Rosenthal, who quoted an anonymous scout as saying, "There's a lot of quit on that team."

Last month another scout offered similar criticism to CBSSports.com's Jon Heyman.

"I don't see it," Roenicke said. "I see sometimes that a guy isn't running down to first base hard. A couple of guys I've told not to. We had one [injury] blowout last year because of it, and Aramis [Ramirez], I just flat-out tell he can't do it. But there's some other guys once in a while that don't run hard down to first base.

"Other than that, whoever makes that comment [doesn't] know what they're talking about, because we're still getting after it the way I think we should. Whenever you do not score runs, it always looks like you've got no energy. Offense brings energy. It brings it to the dugout. So when you don't score runs, I don't care what team it is in baseball, you can look at every single one of them, if they get shut out and you watch the bench during the game, you'll say, 'Hey, they didn't have any energy.'"

The anonymous criticism irks Roenicke.

"There's nothing to it," he said. "If there was something to it, believe me, I would have meetings about it. I haven't had to do that, which I think is really good, as bad as we are playing. I'm glad these guys are still trying to get after it, going out and playing hard every day. We've got a lot of guys banged up who won't come out of the lineup. They need to [rest], and they're still wanting to play every day. For the people who don't know these things, they have no idea what they're talking about."