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NL DIVISION SERIES: NATIONALS VS DODGERS

October 4, 2019

Dave Roberts

Los Angeles, California - pregame 2

THE MODERATOR: Questions, please.

Q. I know AJ Pollock's numbers against Steve Strasburg were really good. How much of that fit into the decision to have him bat third today?
DAVE ROBERTS: That was part of it. Strasburg is sort of neutral and so to have AJ, he's been swinging the bat well for the last five weeks, and obviously the familiarity, the history. So to get him up there to get a few looks at him kind of was my thought. And, obviously, when you have Corey hitting seventh and you got Muncy in fifth, there's just a lot of length. So when you're trying to match up going forward into the sixth, seventh inning, eighth inning I liked the potential matchups too.

Q. Gavin Lux was just in here talking about how the organization and everyone here makes the transition easy for them when they come up to the big leagues. Can you speak to that a little bit?
DAVE ROBERTS: Yeah, I think that it starts with a lot of good young players, good guys, Gavin, Dustin, Tony Gonsolin, obviously Will Smith and those guys, just good guys and so they're easy to kind of root for and kind of embrace. We have done a good job as an organization, just the cohesiveness from the minor league player development side to the big league side, whether it be verbiage, communication, talking to each other, putting eyes on one another during the season, spring training. And so having guys over in the minor league games and having them in camp. So it's just the familiarity, we do a really good job of that, and we just feel that it gives these young players the best chance to perform at a high level.

Q. How did that evolve? When did that start? Did you notice that in the game where it was kind of an organizational thing, it wasn't a divide between the minors and big league level?
DAVE ROBERTS: Well, I think that you could see it coming in the last six, seven years in the big leagues, but here, once I got over here I felt that was something that, knowing you have a lot of young players, but you have a lot of good veteran players but need those guys to kind of support the veteran players and to have something that's really good right now and a championship caliber club every year and to kind of keep that going forward for years to come, you need those guys and to kind of instill a culture.

So having guys that understood that we need those young players, we need Corey Seager, Cody Bellinger, Julio Urias. We need all those guys and you need to make those guys feel comfortable. So to a man our veteran players really understood that and it's taken from there and credit goes to the coaches and the players.

Q. With some of those kids Justin Turner was saying yesterday that when, a couple years ago, you get called up, there's all this analytics, all this information, it was kind of overwhelming for them. Now it seems like at the minor league level they're being fed it so when they come up here it's not that much of a transition. How critical can that be for a young kid who is already maybe a little intimidated by reaching the big leagues?
DAVE ROBERTS: Yeah, because when you get up here the expectation, the pressure to perform, it matters, it's not about development. So when you get a young player that has, is familiar with a lot of things that we do in an organization and sometimes more versed than the big league players are, it makes the transition much easier. I think that just the guys that we get, from scouting to identify players and our minor league outfield coordinator Tarrik Brock told me we want SAT players, smart athletic, and tough. So we have a lot of SAT players. And so, but to have those type of players and have that intelligence, they can handle a lot.

Q. Kind of following up on that, with Will Smith in particular as a rookie catcher, have you done things to ease the burden or ease the workload for him in particular? And, anticipating that you will say no, why do you think he's able to handle that position at such a young age?
DAVE ROBERTS: I think, yeah, we have put a lot on his plate. I think the one thing that we have done is monitored his workload, appreciating that this is the most baseball he's ever played. So you look at September, he shared a lot of the duties with rust. That's one thing as opposed to just kind of jumping in there with both feet on the workload side of things. But I think that obviously his upbringing, he's a baseball rat, obviously college I'm sure had something to do with that. But just intelligence, he's an intelligent young man, so he has just a way of kind of deciphering between what he can and can't use. But I think we do a good job of not giving him too much and understanding what he can and can't handle.

Q. Off the series a little bit, just a question about, you have seven managerial openings right now and a number of veteran guys out there who haven't been able to get jobs in recent years. Do you think it's going to start coming back around where these guys are going to start getting jobs again back in the major leagues or not, is the trend to younger managers going to continue?
DAVE ROBERTS: I think that it will -- I mean I hope, my hope is that it shifts back, in the sense of there's a lot of very good baseball men that have managed before that have a lot of good experience, great experience and that are open minded to kind of young players, obviously, information, and just their feel for the game, these are good baseball men that are going to get opportunities, that's my hope.

Q. And for you, you had the opportunity as a young manager to get into this thing.
DAVE ROBERTS: I did. I did. And there's just no one way to kind of -- it's not one template. I think that for every market, every team's different. But to your question, I just think that there's some great candidates that have managed before.

Q. What led to you this year doing more defensive shifts than you ever have in the past? Was there, was it a coaching thing, was it player buy-in, what made that change?
DAVE ROBERTS: I think it was we have got a very good R & D department and so for those guys to present information to the coaches and our coaches to look through it, poke holes in it and to buy into it and then to sell it to the players, which we have done. And each year we have been a little bit more aggressive, so the player buy-in is obviously key, but it's a collaboration, but that's something that I believe in, if it makes sense, obviously given a certain situation, and the shifting. A lot of times the ones that do get through, those 22 hoppers, those are the ones that are in the forefront of mind and the 110 mile an hour ball in the six hole is forgotten, it's lost. But I think that as an organization we understand that and again the player buy-in is huge. But, yeah, we do a pretty good job of converting balls into playing outs.

Q. We saw Julio get up in the bullpen a little bit yesterday, didn't come in. But I'm just wondering like what is the ideal Julio situation in your mind? Is there a specific portion of the lineup, a specific hitter, a specific situation?
DAVE ROBERTS: Yeah, I think that last night it was more of having Kenta in there and potentially if they wanted to use one of their left-handed bats, one or two, to kind of have Julio prepared to take on those guys, whether it be Parra or Adams. But it's not like we see Julio as a lefty killer, we see him getting lefties, righties out. So that's kind of it. And that's the good thing about him is that there's no one part of the order that I feel that he has to pitch in to have success. But in that spot right there it was more of just kind of being prepared to counter anything that Davey decided to do.

Q. What impressed you most about Ryu's season this year beyond the really good ERA and I know it's not a strict pairing with Russell Martin, but is there something about that relationship this year that worked for those two together?
DAVE ROBERTS: Ryu is healthy. So he's been healthy, just making pitches, really consistent all year, our most consistent pitcher obviously all season long.

As far as Russell, I don't know the answer. I do know the numbers and I know that there's a comfort level and there's something to, when you talk to pitchers, that there's a certain target back there, a feeling, a visual that feels, that makes you feel like you can command a pitch or make a pitch. And you can't quantify it, but there's something that, it's tangible and we're going to do whatever we can to put Hyun-jin in the best position to have success.

Q. Spoke briefly with Rich Hill yesterday and he seems like he's ready to go. Is the plan still -- what's the plan for him?
DAVE ROBERTS: The plan is for him to start on, start Game 4. So he threw a side yesterday, came out of it, felt good. Don't see him available in the pen today and he'll be ready for Game 4.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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