|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NL DIVISION SERIES: ROCKIES VS BREWERSOctober 6, 2018Charlie BlackmonDenver, Colorado - Workout Day Q. Charlie, you said the other night that you were feeling some of the stress of all the late-night games and the travel and stuff, even though you guys had fought through it. Having said that, how important is getting back home today, regular environment, and just being able to kind of get back in the home routine? Do you think that's going to be a big advantage tomorrow? CHARLIE BLACKMON: I think that helps us. Baseball is a game where you do it every day, and being in your comfort zone can be important to your performance on the field. And sometimes when you have crazy travel and weird circumstances and a lot of times playing in the playoffs or a Wild Card game just changes the dynamic of the amount of stress that players feel. So I think just being here back at home, staying in your bed and being around people that you're more comfortable with, I think that can only help us. Q. You said last year that when you played in the Wild Card game, that really gave you a lot of experience and information you could carry into this year. After two games of this series, are there things that have hit you and the team that maybe are kind of new, and what have you learned from that, and have you guys discussed those things? CHARLIE BLACKMON: You know, I think having played last year has helped me a lot this year. I knew what obstacles I was going to face. And most of what I faced going into the postseason, having learned it from last year, is that it was going to be difficult for me to control how I felt on the baseball field. There's a lot of emotions. You maybe get a little nervous. Your adrenaline is going. Like all these things kind of mess with your feel for the game. And I felt like that was my main goal this year, to come out and be in control of my thoughts and keep my heart rate from spiking and all that kind of thing. And I did a really good job of that in Milwaukee. And that was my main goal, and that's going to enable me to be a good baseball player. I think every game that we play is only going to help us in that respect, so I expect being back at home, having a day off, that kind of thing is going to help the Rockies get back to where we need to be. Q. Wade Miley has had some success quite a bit against the Rockies here and overall. Can you talk about just what he brings to the table and the things you guys have to do to combat him? CHARLIE BLACKMON: I feel like Wade is a guy who's been around for a little while. He knows what he needs to do to be a pretty good pitcher. And there's a lot of things that he does to try and make hitters uncomfortable. He throws a lot of cutters. He works quickly. He is aggressive. You know, there's a lot of things that he does, but we've seen all these things before. I think we only faced him once this year. But it's good to have somebody who I've faced him quite a few times in the past with Arizona. You know, it's not anything crazy that we're going to be facing that we haven't done before, so I feel like we're in a good spot. We're going to be well prepared. Q. I feel like a hallmark for this season for you guys has been when you have a tough loss or you lose a tough series, you always seem to bounce back, run off a string of wins. What kind of confidence does that give you now that your backs are against the wall here? CHARLIE BLACKMON: Sure. We've lost some big games before. We've lost a few big games before, and it seems like every time we do that, we bounce back well. We lost the series in LA, and it kind of looked like we weren't going to make it to the playoffs, and then we came out and put a bit of a streak together to get here. So I don't think there's any panic in our clubhouse. Guys have the confidence that we can bounce back, that we know we're a good team. We've won a lot of games. We've been in this position before. So I think guys really have a lot of confidence in the spot that we're at right now. Q. When you're going up against the Brewers team and facing so many different pitchers in one game, particularly Knebel, Jeffress and Hader, how do you adjust, and what are those challenges when you really are only seeing them once in a game, and they're just such different types of pitchers, as well? CHARLIE BLACKMON: It is different not having three or four at-bats against a starter. It is different facing these guys that are really max-effort guys who might have a little bit better stuff. But the fact that they can keep bringing multiple guys in makes it such that each at-bat, you're facing a tough pitcher. I think one of the advantages that those guys have is that they don't get seen a whole lot. Over the course of a season, you might only get to face those guys one or two teams apiece. And now since we've faced them a couple times already in the first two games, I think that gives us a little bit of an advantage having seen them. We know what adjustments to make. We have seen them in the game pitch to our teammates, other left-handed batters. I think we'll be a little bit better off next time we face them, but it is different. Each at-bat is completely different. I think that's where preparation comes in. Having a good idea of what this guy's stuff looks like or what his tendencies are I think can help you go into an at-bat when you only have one at-bat against this particular pitcher. And to be honest, we've already passed that stage now. We're getting to the point to now we have first-hand experience, we've already faced this pitcher, and that's way better in terms of going into my next at-bat rather than just looking at it on video. I've actually been in the box and faced that guy before. Q. Is there sustained success with just so many arms leading the National League in wins primarily with their bullpen, kind of speak to the climate of what baseball is in 2018 a little bit? CHARLIE BLACKMON: I think so. I think a lot of teams are going to sit down and look at how the playoffs went and analyze who was successful and why they were successful and then try and replicate that going forward, and it happens every year. It seems like a couple years ago, we wanted the Ben Zobrist hybrid, can-play-anywhere player. And last year, it seemed like the big thing was, oh, the super tear-down. You tear down your team and be crappy for a couple years and try and get all your talent to arrive at the Big Leagues at the same time. And I think this year, the new trend is bullpening. But I do think over the past few years, you've seen an increase in specialization of the game, and that means more matching up, more players that are really good at one particular thing, especially on the pitching side. And that seems to be -- like go out there for one inning, be really, really good, and then don't have to pitch again until the next day or the next day. If that's the strength of your team, if you can find four or five guys that can all be that guy, then have three innings from a starter and then piece together the rest of the game, it's just really hard to get to the playoffs like that. You can't expect Jeffress to throw, what, four innings in two games consistently over the course of 162 games and still make it to the playoffs. Q. First home playoff game in nine years. It's probably going to be packed and noisy. What do you envision it being like tomorrow, and how much is it going to help, or how much could it help? CHARLIE BLACKMON: I think it's going to be packed. I think the numbers are really going to turn out. I think it's going to be very loud. I think it'll help the Rockies for sure. Everywhere we've played, it's been super loud, and everybody hates us. So now it'll be super loud and everybody loves us, I hope. Q. From the outside looking in, I think it's easy for us to look at some of the at-bats in Milwaukee from your club and think maybe you guys are pressing a little bit. Is that a fair critique, or was it just that the Brewers were just pitching you and scouted you well? CHARLIE BLACKMON: I'm probably only going to speak for myself, and I felt like, like I said, I was in control of my emotions. I didn't let the atmosphere get the best of me. I felt like I took some good swings. I felt like I had some near misses. They made some good pitches. You know, I feel like I swung the bat better than maybe the results would indicate. I feel like a few other guys were in the same boat. And then it's possible that some guys were still trying to cope with the atmosphere of the playoffs. I don't think that's the case. Most of our guys are -- they've been there, done that. So it's kind of hard to say why we haven't scored as many runs as we should have. But I don't think there's reason to start changing swings or hitting the panic button or anything like that. I think that's just kind of how it turned out. Q. You talked earlier about your ability to control your heart rate and so forth during the two games in Milwaukee. Given the circumstances tomorrow, the significance of the game, do you have to take a slightly different approach to this one, or do you come at it the way you would any game? CHARLIE BLACKMON: I would -- we've had some conversations about this, but I'm trying to make every game be a regular game in my mind, which means I try my hardest every time I go to the plate. It shouldn't matter if it's the first inning, the ninth inning of a game in May or a game in October. So there's not like levels of effort where sometimes I try hard, sometimes I don't. I think the more important thing is to control your emotions and your anxiety and that kind of thing. So letting those things go way up high just because it's a playoff game is not going to make me a better baseball player. So I'm going to try and do the exact same thing, going to have a clear mind, and I think it'll be easier being here in Denver with the home crowd than it would be on the road where you're maybe not as comfortable. Q. Going back to Jeffress, you've only faced him a few times in your career, but if you could put your scouting cap on, what makes him so good? Is it movement on his fastball, that split change, the curveball, his command? He's given up no more than 10 earned runs this year. CHARLIE BLACKMON: I felt like honestly we had really good at-bats against him. And every time I've faced him, I've felt pretty good. Not to discredit him, he had a great year. I think the thing he does best is he looks to be very consistent mentally. He's very aggressive, has a lot of confidence, goes out there and pitches with conviction. I don't think his stuff is far and away better than anybody else who's in that late-inning role. I just think he's found a way to make it play up by being good at -- good for him every time he goes out there. Q. Any time the Rockies are in the national spotlight, it seems like there's a little bit of uninformed maligning of Coors Field and the affect that has on the team. Can you say anything to -- is there anything you'd want to correct on the record about the Coors Field affect as well as things you think the team has been able to take advantage of to make this a significant advantage, this ballpark, for you? CHARLIE BLACKMON: Coors Field is a unique challenge. Nobody else in the game faces what we go through. At elevation, you're consistently exposed to less oxygen. You don't recover as well over the course of 162 games. It's more likely that you're going to get hurt, wear down, lose weight, get sick, those types of things. That's not including what it does to the actual game of baseball. The balls move differently at Coors Field, whether they be pitched balls, thrown balls, hit balls. The ball has less air at Coors Field, which is different than every other park. So when we play at home, home games, we get very used to what the ball does, and at such a high level, small percentage changes in what the ball does is a big difference. If I were to just be a 10 percent better hitter, that adds like 20, 30 points on your batting average. That's significant, right? Well, if the ball does 10 percent something different here versus somewhere else, it's a big adjustment for players playing such a high level in May. If you get used to playing at home and then you go to San Francisco, which is the complete opposite end of the spectrum, it's going to be a tough adjustment to make, and vice versa. So I think people don't give that aspect of it enough credit and how hard it is to adjust going from home-road. And it's not just hitters. You'll see pitchers. Watch pitchers come out tomorrow. And the first time they throw a breaking ball, it's going to spin and be up high and not have a lot of good shape on it. And then when you see guys go on the road, the first breaking ball they throw after being in Denver, it seems like they spike it in the dirt. It changes the feel of the game a little bit. But at the same time, we're Big League players. You've got to figure it out. Nobody cares because it's all about results. It's our job to overcome that. That's the long answer. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|