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NL DIVISION SERIES: ROCKIES VS BREWERSOctober 3, 2018Bud BlackMilwaukee, Wisconsin - Workout Day Q. Craig has announced it's going to be a bullpen day for the Brewers tomorrow. What's the challenge for your offense to get ready for that, especially at this level of the season? BUD BLACK: Well, I think we'll adhere to rule number one, which is be ready for anything, which our guys will be. Whichever way they start this game out, we'll be ready for any number of pitchers that might come our way. We've probably faced most of them at some point, so there's some history. Again, I think the ultimate challenge is just have good at-bats, play baseball, have a good approach against any pitcher that the Brewers throw out there. I think that's the thing that will stand out for us coming to the ballpark tomorrow is whoever that might be, we know those pitchers. We've faced them. So let's have good at-bats. Let's do what we do. Q. Do you have any projected starters for Friday and Sunday? BUD BLACK: Well, yeah. We're working through some things. Senza is going to throw tomorrow, and we're probably leaning towards Tyler Anderson on Friday. Q. Nolan Arenado, it's his first extended postseason series. Is this a good chance for him to kind of show off to the country what he has, and I guess really just embrace that playoff spot that he relishes? BUD BLACK: Sure, I mean, not only Nolan, but everybody, our entire team I think is on this stage, and hopefully it gets bigger as we go. But I know this means a lot to Nolan. I know that he has said that, obviously, about where he's hoping that this club gets to, and now we're here, hopefully to keep going, and play in these types of games. But it's also the same for Charlie and DJ and CarGo and Desi, our core position players, Trevor, even though he's a three-year player. This is a great stage for him as well. So all our guys, man, they're excited about it. They're pumped to be here, as you can tell from last night. Q. What do you make of what Yelich has done in the second half? If you look at his numbers, they're crazy good, and then even better the last three or four weeks. What do you make of that, and what do you do -- I know you've got some hot guys, too. BUD BLACK: Well, what a player. I think we've seen him grow up, right? Obviously we haven't been in the division as Christian has in the NL East or in the Central, but I've seen enough of him to see a talented player emerge. That's what's happened is his emergence as a -- what an all-around great player. We saw it recognized by an All Star birth. And just the second half has been phenomenal, what he's done. What I appreciate is doing it in September, what he's done. That tells you a lot about a player, what they do when the stakes are the highest. I mean, good for him. And I got to meet him at the All-Star Game and engage with him a little bit, which was great. You can't engage with everybody, but I found time to engage with him. And what a nice kid, I mean, really, really great to talk to, and really in a way humble and sort of shy, right? That's sort of how I got it. But what a great kid. So I'm very happy for him. Q. Was Trevor's story a little bit like that for you guys down the stretch? BUD BLACK: A little bit. Maybe -- I'd say the whole year of Trevor was really good, and then down the stretch, obviously not Yelich numbers, but there were some big performances, you know, the three-home run game. And there were some other big nights from Trevor, but yeah, you could make sort of a comparison of really the emergence of those two. Trevor's second half got him in the conversation about the MVP, right, especially the last six months when all that talk, all that talk starts to really heighten. Trevor became a name in there with Nolan and Yelich and Carpenter and Baez and all the guys that are being talked about. It was really cool for Trev. Q. A number of times during the year you would mention there's nothing wrong with a starting pitcher going six innings or seven innings, and you've had that a lot from your guys. BUD BLACK: Right. Q. That's kind of counter to the trend in baseball right now and with your opponent here. BUD BLACK: Right. Q. Starters going with some length for you guys, how much is that a result of talent, and how much of it is old-school philosophy? BUD BLACK: I think it's more talent. I think if you have those types of pitchers who have that talent who can work their way through six, seven innings three times through a lineup and you feel good about where they are stamina-wise, stuff-wise, still having the ability to make pitches, when you get to pitch 80 to pitch 110, I think over the long haul of the regular season, that works. I still think that works. As it relates to a playoff series, which is different than a playoff game, right, because anything can happen, you've got to watch that game with a real critical eye, a one-game situation like last night, you have to watch it, and the ability to do that is great. But if you have a poor performance, man, you're out of there early. But in a playoff series in your -- and maybe five games is a little bit different than seven, but you have your pitching staff, you have your roster, you have your maybe seven, eight relievers, whatever there might be, four starters, it's all talent related. It really is. I think the strength of a pitching staff for me is the sum of its parts, man, you have to have good pitchers, 1 through 12 or 1 through 11, whatever that might be. Q. Five-game series, seven-game series, do you have to tweak the philosophy at all? BUD BLACK: Well, maybe some, because every game is important, right? And it helps now when you have -- we had today off. The Brewers have had two days off. There's a day off on Saturday. There's another one on Tuesday, right? So I mean, that helps keep certain bullpen members fresh and the ability to go to them, where maybe during the regular season, you might not have that luxury. In October, there's sort of light at the end of the tunnel, and you can sort of push guys a little bit out of that bullpen. But it probably changes a little bit because you probably want to get certain pitchers into the game to try to win it or try to win that inning, that type of philosophy, for sure. Q. For you, two years now, two playoff spots, I guess relative to your expectations coming into this job, has it been more than what you expected or about the same, or what's your -- BUD BLACK: Well, coming into this job, I knew the Rockie organization from a player perspective, right, just the big-league level, watching Nolan, watching Charlie, DJ, not many of the pitchers I saw from the other side -- I saw a lot of these fellows. So I didn't really know what to expect on the total team personnel and even the Minor League players who ultimately came up to us last year and this year. So once I got into this job and into our organization and into our player development situation, I realized that this is a good team with some talent. And if we pitch, I always thought that we could contend. Last spring, I saw the Marquezes and the Freelands and the Senzatelas and the Hoffmans and the Castellanis and Lamberts and Tyler Anderson and Jon Gray and all the guys, Bettis. I saw our bullpen a little bit because it was an experienced bunch, right, with Holland and Davis this year, McGee, Dunn, I'm familiar with these fellows. But the starting pitcher group, which is going to throw 850, 950 innings, whatever that might be, I didn't know much about these fellows. But once I saw them in Spring Training, the first initial glance was, hey, these guys are okay. But you don't know. Then the season started, and then I saw what they're made of, and I thought that if we could hold the fort a little bit with the pitching, our position player group would do their thing, and we could maybe make a run at it. Every year is different, and I definitely thought this year based on what I saw last year that we could contend with the Dodgers who had won the division the last number of years, the Diamondbacks coming off a good year, the Giants with their group of -- with Posey and those guys are always viable. I thought that we could do it. We could contend and match these teams. And sure enough, we have. It's a current expectation for sure. That's where we want to be. Q. Getting back to the bullpen theme a little bit, given how you leaned on your relievers to get here and given how those guys operate on the other side there, can it be understated just how much this series might hinge on the performance of either bullpen? BUD BLACK: Well, I think that's the case nowadays in the current game, where the bullpen plays a huge part of successful postseasons. You know, I lived it in Anaheim with our group when we won the World Series. Going back to my playing days, it was a different era where starting pitchers threw complete games. Bret Saberhagen threw two complete games in 1995. Charlie Leibrandt pitched into the ninth inning in 1985. You look at the Cardinal starters in '85. You look at their innings pitched. It's a different ballgame now. The specialization has taken over and the bullpen usage is way different. It's imperative that bullpen success in playoffs happen for W's. I mean, that's just the way it is. It's going to hinge on that for both teams. It's going to hinge on that, I believe, in every series that's played. Now, some of these playoff teams have certain types of pitchers that can really dominate a game, the Verlanders and Sale and some of these other fellows, and we feel like on a given night, some of our guys might, too, whether it's Buehler, Kershaw. They have that capability and down the line. But when it comes down to it, playoff teams are good teams, and they're going to -- and these games are close. And as the game gets down to the end, in the National League for sure, you're pinch-hitting, you're doing things that get relievers into the game. It's so critical that these guys perform. Q. Kind of along those lines, you alluded to earlier because these games are so important, you want to get your better pitchers into them earlier sometimes? BUD BLACK: Well, I think I mentioned -- I don't know if you want to get your better pitchers in there. You need to get your pitchers in there maybe earlier to get the right -- maybe to get the right matchup or get the right guy in that game for that particular role that's maybe emerging. You know, that's where the talent of your bullpen has to be there because you never want to bring in a lesser pitcher at any point during -- as the game unfolds. That's why you have to have good pitchers, and you have to have depth. Q. Specifically for a guy like Adam, how early can you see deploying him in the game? BUD BLACK: Well, yesterday we brought him in in the 7th inning. I would think that that's probably where we'd look at that. Now, if there's a certain situation in some type of game where it's the 6th, maybe, I could see that potentially. But we feel comfortable with a lot of our other guys in the 5th or 6th inning, but it's not out of the question to bring Adam in in the 6th inning of a certain type of game and the ramifications of that game. Q. Last week, the Brewers started Dan Jennings for one batter against Matt Carpenter to lead off the game. Would you give any thought to flipping Blackmon and LeMahieu to start the game to counter that? BUD BLACK: No. Is he starting tomorrow? Q. What has Matt Holliday brought to the team that maybe you didn't have early on in the season? BUD BLACK: Well, I think it's the presence of a right-handed bat that we needed. I think our left-handedness, especially in the outfield and on the bench, was heavy with CarGo and David Dahl and Parra and McMahon, Michael Tauchman, other guys who have been on our club. It was heavy, heavy left-handed. We had Noel Cuevas come up and do a bit of fine work for us, but we thought Matt might bring us another element of power, experience, a guy who has been there, has been through a pennant race. And he was ready for that reunion with us. He was motivated to play. I think all along the season, he was looking for the right fit to play. And when both Matt and Jeff Bridich, our general manager, connected in the middle of the summer, that was in the works to make it happen. I think both sides wanted that to get done. And sure enough, it did. Matt did everything to get ready to play physically and mentally. I think he had been working out for most of the first half of this year down home in Florida, so he was in good shape there. He just needed some baseball repetitions. He got them done a little bit in Florida, joined our rookie ball team in Grand Junction. From there, went to Albuquerque, got close to 60 at-bats like you would in a Spring Training situation. He did it in Albuquerque in a Triple-A environment, physically in a good spot, moving well in the outfield, moving well in the batter's box. He looked good. He looked good for not playing for a while. And he's brought contributions statistically. I think it's only three RBI's, but it's been good at-bats, man. His on-base percentage was great. His at-bats have been solid. He's taking his walks. He's taking good swings. He has hit a couple homers, got that double yesterday down the line against Lester. So he's done his part. And the great presence he brings to our clubhouse, the experience to talk with younger players, older players, just who he is as a teammate has been really, really valuable. Q. Do you have your pitching plan past game -- BUD BLACK: Yeah, we're Senzatela tomorrow and we're leaning towards Tyler Anderson on Friday. And then there's a day off, and more than likely, you'll see Marquez and Freeland in some fashion. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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