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NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DODGERS VS BREWERSOctober 12, 2018Craig CounsellMilwaukee, Wisconsin - pregame 1 Q. Could you just tell us about the one substitution you made, Cedeno for Broxton. I assume that you want the lefty matchup late in innings but also what you'd lose by Keon not being on the roster? CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah. So we made a choice basically to add another pitcher, because it could be a seven-game series. We add another left-hander that we think matches up well in kind of a number of situations. So we add extra potential outs. And then the sacrifice is we're losing a base runner, a defender, and we're losing a hitter. We're going to use a lot of pitching this series and we're going to make a lot of pitching changes most likely, you know, it probably will cost us a pitcher at-bat somewhere along the line more than it would have having that extra guy. So that's one of the sacrifices we're making, too. Q. Cost you one in that a pitcher might have to hit? CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah. Q. The Dodgers added a pitcher who's probably not that easy to scout in Julio Urias. Hasn't pitched too much this year. How much do you know about him? CRAIG COUNSELL: You know, he's not a secret, I guess. We faced him last year. With the video, we know plenty about him. So he's obviously a guy that's not pitched a lot. He's had some injury issues this year. He was a highly touted player coming into last season. So it's a player we feel comfortable with, I would say. I think there's plenty of information to go on with a guy like Urias, yeah. Q. Could you reflect a little bit. Obviously Clayton Kershaw is an all-time great pitcher. Can you talk about what you admire most about him? CRAIG COUNSELL: You know, as people who compete in the game and watch the game, I think we all admire longevity of excellence. I think guys that can maintain a high-level performance for a long time, everybody's impressed by that because it's not easy to last in the game and pitch at the level he has for this long. He's not an old player by any means, but he's been putting together nice seasons for quite a long time. Q. Craig, one more on the roster. In deciding not to add a Davies or an Anderson like a traditional starting pitcher, is it safe to say you basically are confident in that guys who made starts for you, but maybe not down the stretch, that they're still stretched out enough to deliver the innings? Was there any debate about whether you had enough innings in those guys? CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah. The innings we talked about, for sure. We're going to share the innings, you know. It's going to be -- I think you saw in the Division Series kind of how the final tally of innings were divided. I think it'll look very similar at the end of this series, and you'll have to add Junior and Freddy into that mix of guys and Xavier and the guys that are adding outs. But I think you won't see a player that's kind of way ahead in terms of how many outs he got for us in the series. And that's how we think we cover the 27 outs a day is to share them. And it's not going to be one guy, but there's going to be guys sharing them. And we have to trust all of them to pitch in big situations. And we do. Q. With all the options you have in setting this lineup, this particular infield configuration for tonight with Perez at second and Moustakas at third, I believe, has only been used twice before. Was that something that struck you at all in sending that defense? CRAIG COUNSELL: No. I mean, Hernan is a player that fits in all over the field for us. He's played seven positions. I don't know if he's played center field this year, but he's played -- he has played center field, I think. He's played every position on the field three years in a row for us, so he's played plenty of second base. You may see him at shortstop this series. So he kind of fits in everywhere, and if that's the case, that actually kind of surprises me a little bit, because this is a lineup or a team that feels like it's been out there kind of regularly. Q. Craig, in a couple minutes Bob Uecker is going to come in here and talk to us. You've talked about how much fun this team has had and the chemistry and everything. Can you talk about what it's been like having Bob involved in that and coming into the clubhouse for all the champagne showers and how does that kind of benefit your team? CRAIG COUNSELL: Uke is -- we do a radio show every day before the game, and we spend -- it's a four-and-a-half-minute radio show that takes us 20 minutes to do. (Laughs). And so that's one of my favorite parts of the day that I get to laugh with him, and we get to swap stories and have fun and tell jokes. And his are better than mine. But it's a thrill for me every day. And I think the bottom line is that Bob -- like he belongs in a baseball clubhouse, man. He fits. He gets it. His sense of humor doesn't have an age span. It plays to all audiences. And so the guys love having him around. And I think if you ask every one of them, they're looking for: When is Uke here? They're looking to go say high to Uke every day. So he's just got this great way about him. I haven't been up in the broadcast booth a lot, but in the couple years that I wasn't playing or doing this, I did stop by a couple times, and it's the same thing up there, man. The stream of visitors is endless for him. And he's good at it, man. He loves it. He entertains like nobody else. And so everybody wants that around. Q. Craig, you guys have two home games here, but how important is tonight's game to get the victory and set the tone of the series? CRAIG COUNSELL: I mean, we've got seven huge games maybe. I mean, I think both teams badly want to win Game 1, and we'll do our best to do it. We just gotta -- it's about us executing and trying to out-execute them and out-perform them. It's going to come down to guys on the field. I know we talk about our pitching a lot, but in the end it comes down to the players executing what's going on on the field. And we're happy the game's at home, that's for sure. We're happy that we get to start here. We earned that right to have the series start here, and that's a good thing for us. Q. Craig, we had talked about how dominant Clayton Kershaw has been for so long, but Christian Yelich has basically owned him over the course of his career. How impressive is it what Yelich has been able to do against Kershaw? CRAIG COUNSELL: I think if you have great players going up against each other, it elevates both their games. Look, it's part of the series that I think is a fun matchup. And we talked about yesterday the -- it's a small sample to me, but the success that he's had makes it even more interesting in that there's going to be adjustments made on both sides. And in the end for Kershaw, it's about staying out of the middle of the plate, and Yelly is going to try to get a ball in the middle of the plate. And whoever wins that battle or whoever executes that part of it is probably going to come out on top. Q. Craig, you rode the pen in the NLDS the whole way, but the NLCS has less rest days, so how are you going to manage your pen and keep them rested? And at the same time, smaller picture, what is Gio's expectation today as a starter? CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah, I mean we're fine. Our bullpen is a different type of bullpen. We have what we feel like is -- if you talk about Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff and Junior Guerra and Freddie Peralta, that's four starters down there. So they're capable of, we think, length and covering innings and getting multiple innings worth of outs. So I think we're in good shape there. Also we're going to count on our starting pitching for sure, I mean, the guys that start. Those guys are important to us. It's important how they set the tone, as much as anything, how our guys in the Division Series just set the tone, they just put up zeros. They didn't give up runs. That's going to put you in a good spot handing the ball off to the bullpen if your starters don't give up runs. So no matter what inning they get to, if they're doing something like that, we're going to be in a good spot. Q. Craig, you know you probably had a chance to look at Clayton's start against the Braves, and it was a little unusual in that as efficient as he was -- in terms of 85 pitches over eight innings and also three strikeouts over eight innings, which was unusual for him. In looking at that start, did you see any sort of seismic shift in strategy out of him and the way he was attacking guys that may be of some use to you today? CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah, look, it was one of those starts you see where the Braves made a decision to be very aggressive. And that's going to be kind of feast or famine essentially. So they were aggressive, and they swung at strikes. Clayton threw strikes. They just didn't make great contact with it. So the key to any -- I think the key to getting starting pitching in this league, regular-season, playoffs, is that you have to apply pressure to the starting pitching, and you have to try to apply it as early as you can. And so in that game he was never really under pressure. And so for both teams applying pressure to the starting pitcher is something that's crucial, make him make stressful pitches as much as you possibly can and then you'll cash in eventually. Q. Craig, just wondering, what does it mean this time of year having a guy like Curtis Granderson here with all the post-season experience he has? CRAIG COUNSELL: Through the course of the season, we've added a bunch of players that weren't in the organization to start the season. And Curtis is a great example, and I could mention other names in Erik Kratz and Gio, Johnny Schoop, Moustakas. We've really matured as a team as the season's gone on by adding kind of the quality of -- we've added good players, and we've added really quality people that have really added just to the clubhouse and our team element, and Curtis is at the top of the list. I mean, when we traded for him, you know, the first thing I said was, man, it's an honor to have you on our team. We tried last year. I was hopeful last year. We tried to get him. We were unable. But the fact that we were able to add him this year, and he made a big impact in the month of September. So when you add guys like that, I think they're able to lift everybody else up, and he's done just that, as some other guys have as well. Q. The last time David Freese was here in the postseason was 2011. What do you remember about that series, and seven years later he's still having success in the postseason. Why do you think he has so much success in the playoffs? CRAIG COUNSELL: I mean David had a good playoff run with the Cardinals for sure. He's been in our division for a while and a thorn in our side for a while. He has tough -- the thing about David Freese, he has tough at-bats. He's got a plan. He's got some spots that he's really good at that you gotta stay away from. And he's put together good tough post-season at-bats. He puts together good at-bats during the regular season. He's the player that you kind of see him and you're like, this is a tough at-bat. Those guys are going to be wired for long-term success for sure. Q. Thinking back to that day Wade Miley got hurt in Spring Training, a non-roster guy, some teams might have let a player like that go take his chances somewhere else. But you guys committed kind of long-term, even though it was going to be four or six weeks, whatever it was. Can you think back to that, was that a front office driven call? Was it the coaches who really wanted to stick by him, or was everybody really on the same page based on what you had seen? CRAIG COUNSELL: I would give Wade a lot of credit there too, because Wade was on a minor league contract. So when he got hurt, he did not -- it was not a Major League -- he was rehabbing under a minor league contract. And in our eyes, he had made the team, and he had made an impression on us that he was going to be in the rotation. And he had pitched that well, and we thought he had made some changes that were going to have -- he was going to have success. So we wanted him to stick around. I think the fact that he chose to stick around says a lot about him, I think as much as anything, because, again, he could have gone anywhere else. And maybe the way he pitched, somebody gives him a Major League deal at that point. I don't know. But the fact that he stuck around and finished out his rehab -- you know, it was probably six weeks. I think, that he was forced to kind of go to the -- he was on a minor league deal and not making a salary. So I give him a lot of credit for sticking it out in that situation and trusting us that he was going to be part of this. Q. Here's the hard-hitting stuff you love, Craig. The talk of the community -- some of the talk in the community is that for the first time since 1987 there's 150,000 free hamburgers riding on the Brewers winning tonight. CRAIG COUNSELL: There we go. Q. And considering how people like free stuff, can you guys stand that kind of pressure going into tonight's game? (Laughs)? CRAIG COUNSELL: Who knew that we would make it this far and the biggest piece of stress going into this game would be George Webb's hamburgers. George Webb's, I guess, I remember the concept of free hamburgers going back so long, it's hard to believe that it's never happened since then. I guess it's a pretty good streak. But it's something for everybody to talk about for sure, and I mean, free hamburgers is free hamburgers. I know you all will be there. (Laughs). Fastscripts by Asap Sports FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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