AL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS VS WHITE SOX

October 8, 2021

Brent Strom

Minute Maid Park

Houston Astros

Pregame 2 Press Conference

Q. We've asked a ton of your pitchers about it, but I'm just curious from your perspective, what makes Martín Maldonado just so good at controlling this staff and being kind of the glue to this team?

BRENT STROM: Well, if I had to vote for MVP of our team from a pitching side of things, obviously Carlos and a lot of people warrant it, but from my standpoint, Martín Maldonado has been invaluable. I think there's a trust factor, a respect factor for Maldy. He does a lot of prep work, has his notes ready to go, works with our analyst extremely well in going back and forth on pitch selection and what each guy can bring to the table.

Then the other thing, in game stuff, he's always coming at me or myself or Murph and talking about what should we start this guy off with, what do you see? At given times during the game when he's a little confused which way to go, we have a secret little sign thing that we do once in a while, and I'll give him maybe a suggestion, and then I pray that I was right.

But he's been invaluable controlling the running game. To me, he's my personal MVP of the team.

Q. Graveman and Pressly pitched last night. How resilient do you think they could be in this series if they both went 20-plus pitches? I know they've had some rest, but do you have to watch them a little closer knowing they got their feet wet in Game 1?

BRENT STROM: I was feeling a little frisky after two outs and five pitches with Graveman last night. I started to think about the game today and the possibility of him being able to come back. Then, obviously, an inning's never over, and third out can be difficult. 20 pitches later, he had 25 pitches. And we ended it with a bullet to centerfield for an out.

I will check with him today when he plays catch. I'm hopeful the fact this is a playoff game that will hold some value with the ability to step up and pitch. With Pressly, I don't have the same issue. Pressly will be good to go. I just need to check on Graveman today. I fully expect both of them being ready to pitch, especially with tomorrow being an off day.

Q. Specifically with Graveman, what have you seen from him since he got over here? Obviously, his numbers in Seattle were unbelievable. Sustaining that probably wasn't expected, but what have you seen command-wise from him since he's gotten over here? Is it mechanics? Kind of what have you seen from him?

BRENT STROM: There's been mechanical issues we tried to address, usually with the lower half of the body. His post foot, his foot that's on the rubber, he had a tendency -- not to get too detailed, he had a tendency to get quad dominated instead of maintaining a flat foot on the rubber, which impacts his direction.

You're seeing a lot of arm side misses, inside to righties, and of course with that heavy sink he has, it just exacerbates the movement. So we've had to readjust his sight line, so to speak. I do believe what we've added here, which is a curveball, has helped him a great deal. To his defense looking at the video last night, the umpire missed -- there were about three pitches that could have swung either way and he didn't get the benefit of.

People don't realize that one pitch can mean so much. I often thought the 1-1 pitch, for example, if you throw a ball 1-1, it changes the at-bat completely from a 1-2 count. But he got through it and he competes. If anybody's -- nobody's harder on Graveman than Graveman himself. When you come over to a new team, especially a team in the race like we are, being in the postseason, there's added pressure to be the new guy on the block and to be thrust into the eighth inning position.

He's going to be fine. We have great faith in him.

Q. How has Greinke taken to this bullpen role, and how would you plan to use him going forward?

BRENT STROM: Greinke is Greinke. There's nothing different. He's taken to it fine. He'll be -- the only thing we need to concern ourselves with is obviously for the length that we have for the postseason, probably he and Javier are two guys that will have to give us length if we struggle early in a game. It will probably take Greinke a little bit longer to get loose than it will Javier.

The one worry I have is, if we do get Javier up, I would say, and then the starter kind of gets out of it and you have to get him up again, I think he can respond better. I'm a little concerned about Greinke being able to do it, but we will see.

You know, this is a guy that started Game 7 for us. This was a guy that was going to pitch the ninth inning if we tied up the ALCS with Tampa in the ninth inning in San Diego. He's a big-time pitcher, and I'm sure he'll respond. There's been no blowback or any kind of digruntledness on his part. He wants to take the ball and wants to help this team.

Q. How does Jake Odorizzi handle things?

BRENT STROM: He's handling it like I would expect a competitor to handle it. It wasn't well. It would be easy for me to say he was a team guy and was all happy about it. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. He was disappointed. He obviously felt he should have been on the team, as did Blake Taylor.

The difference being that the Blake Taylor decision was a lot predicated on who we're playing, the fact that they're so right-handed heavy and the fact that we just felt our right-handed relievers would take precedent over the lefties.

Like if you look at today's lineup, really the only big switch -- it's unlike Tampa. Chicago has a pretty set lineup where the only flip flop is Vaughn and the first baseman sheets, so whoever you put in, somebody else comes in to bat in that order.

With Odorizzi, who had a really good year after a rough start, it was obviously disappointing to him to not be on the club, but he's been in the dugout pulling for the guys, and he's going to be ready depending on if we play -- if we're fortunate to advance to play the Red Sox or Tampa Bay.

Tampa Bay obviously is a team that -- not to get ahead of ourselves, but they present a lot of issues because of their uniqueness in terms of their lefty-righty type of combinations and their lineups. They make switches early in the game, things like that. So you really -- I get a headache, actually, trying to decipher what Tampa's going to do. Chicago's a little bit easier for me.

Q. Looking ahead at the rest of the postseason, Luis Garcia and José Urquidy round out your rotation. Garcia has thrown the most innings in his career and José has had the shoulder issues. Where do you feel those two stand right now?

BRENT STROM: They're both healthy. They're both fine. We were well aware of the Garcia situation. He had hit 100 innings prior to this. I think he's got 155 now, something in that neighborhood.

But if you notice during the season, very rarely did he throw over 80 pitches, 80, 85 pitches. There were a couple of games, the Dodger games where he beat Bauer, which stands out as one of the highlights of the season for me. But they're both healthy and ready to go. We haven't made a decision yet on Game 3. We'll see what today brings and move on from there.

But they're both healthy, ready to go, and doing their work. In fact, Urquidy's going to throw a bullpen, a light one here in a few minutes, and we're ready to go.