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NL DIVISION SERIES: NATIONALS VS DODGERS

October 6, 2019

Dave Martinez

Washington, D.C. - postgame 3

Dodgers - 10, Nationals - 4

THE MODERATOR: Questions.

Q. Can you walk through the decision to take Aníbal out and go to Corbin. You were obviously going to try to use him to get multiple innings. What's going on.
DAVE MARTINEZ: Aníbal was at 87 pitches. He gave us all he had. We were at a good spot in the lineup where we thought Corbin could get through it. And his stuff was good, he's throwing 94, slider was good, I think he left one ball up. But he had every hitter 0-2, he just couldn't finish. They laid off some good pitches.

Q. You talked a lot about the little things and fundamentals. How frustrating is it to allow all those hits in the two strike counts? And then obviously went with Howie is that a case of him trying to be aggressive there, what happened on that play?
DAVE MARTINEZ: I think he was trying to be overly aggressive. He started, stopped, and then started again. And once, for me once, if he would have went right away, he makes it. Once you stop, then that's it, you got to get back. He knew that. He's a veteran guy. Yeah, it was frustrating. The 0-2, we couldn't put the guys away, that's tough. I'm not taking nothing against those guys. Those guys are pretty good hitters. But some pretty good pitching. We had guys 0-2 and we just couldn't finish them off tonight.

Q. Was the plan going in thinking about Corbin specifically for the 6th and was it ideally to go multiple innings or how much did the way the first five innings go change at all what you wanted to do?
DAVE MARTINEZ: No. Yeah, Sánchez gave us five good innings. Kept us in the ball game. After that where we were at in the lineup, we liked Corbin there. Couldn't tell you, hoping we get two out of him, but his limit was going to be about 35 pitches. He hit that limit. So we got to put this one behind us right now, and we got to come back tomorrow. Hey, I told the boys, we stayed in the fight all year, so let's stay in the fight tomorrow and let's get ready to go to L.A.

Q. In his first start Corbin got ahead 0-2 on some hitters in the four-walk inning. Do they just have a really good plan of thinking he will not throw a strike after he gets ahead 0-2 and they're just laying off?
DAVE MARTINEZ: Yeah, they did a great job of laying off. But that's tough. As we have seen Corbin all year, it's tough. It looks, his slider looks like a fastball to the last minute. And he through a pretty good one to Martin. It was down, and he was able to put the bat on it. The other one he left kind of up to Kiké. But to me it was just really just one bad pitch he left up and then they laid off some pretty good pitches.

Q. So tomorrow would be Stephen's throw day. Would he not throw and be available out of the pen?
DAVE MARTINEZ: All hands on deck tomorrow. We are going to come out, we're going to fight and those guys know what we're playing for and we want to go to L.A. That's all this means. I told them that's all this means, we would have to go to L.A. again.

Q. You obviously have confidence in Patrick in that situation to get, especially to get lefties out. What's the frustration level that he was so close to getting out of the inning and maybe able to get you to that 7th or 8th inning, and how anxious is it knowing that that's really the only play you have in a game like this tonight?
DAVE MARTINEZ: For me and you said it, I trust Pat. He's been unbelievable all year. And I would do it again. I really would. He was the guy. I just feel bad for him because he went out there, gave us everything he had, he did. So, and once again, he looked at me in the eye after he came out and says, I'll be ready tomorrow. So that's the kind of guys we got on this team.

Q. What have you seen from this offense right now? It seems like outside of Juan a lot of key guys, guys that you need to get going aren't necessarily clicking?
DAVE MARTINEZ: Yeah, we just got to get the ball in the strike zone. And we got to stay in the middle of the field. There's a lot of hits in the middle of the field. We just got to get back to that and take our walks and just get back to the middle of the field.

Q. I know it's an all hands on deck thing, like you said, for tomorrow, but if you get a normal Max start could you assume like it was in Game 2 where you go Doolittle, Hudson pretty much?
DAVE MARTINEZ: Oh, absolutely. I'm going to have to go one or two of those guys for one plus innings. So we'll see how it plays out. What I do know is that we got Mad Max on the mound tomorrow, which puts, I believe puts us in a great position.

Q. Soto and Rendon have been struggling for a couple of week. Soto's homer, hit, walk, Rendon, are you seeing signs or are they still scuffling except for a swing here or there?
DAVE MARTINEZ: No, I really believe that Rendon got a hit today, stayed inside the ball, hit the ball fairly up the middle. Home run to center field was huge. And then he came up and got base hit, Soto got a base hit to left field, which is nice. So I think that, hey, like I said, like I told them, just get strikes, get, hit strikes. They want to walk you, let them walk you. We got good hitters behind you. So just concentrate on hitting strikes and putting the ball in play.

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