MLB WORLD SERIES: ASTROS VS BRAVES

October 29, 2021

Dusty Baker

Truist Park

Houston Astros

Postgame 3 Press Conference

Atlanta - 2, Houston - 0

Q. Dusty, how do you size up just what happened to your offense tonight and just struggling to get anything going, not only against Anderson, but then when their bullpen came in?

DUSTY BAKER: Like I told you a couple days ago, when you haven't faced a guy, the nod goes to him for a while. He was effectively wild. I mean, he had a 1-to-1 ratio, balls to strikes, and our guys never could zero in on the strikes.

It's no secret they've got a good bullpen. So we didn't center too many balls tonight. We threatened a couple times and didn't get the two-out RBI hits we'd gotten before, and it was kind of an uneventful night for us.

But invariably when you shut us down, usually our guys come back the next day and score a bunch. So I hope history repeats itself.

Q. Dusty, I know that Anderson was effective. When he came out of the game, did you guys breathe a sigh of relief a little bit? I know the bullpen's very good.

DUSTY BAKER: Not really. They did what they had to do. We didn't breathe no sigh of relief. Like I said, you can't take anything away from them, but when the guy's in the zone, out of the zone, like I said, it's tough to zero in on him.

Q. Dusty, what did you make of the job that your pitching staff did as a whole tonight? And Garcia, it seemed like his velocity was up again, but maybe the command was not there.

DUSTY BAKER: Our team did a good job of getting out of trouble, you know what I mean? Because they had left a lot of men on base early. One of the secrets of pitching is knowing how to get out of trouble. Usually you can't get out of trouble more than two or three times during the game, but I thought that Garcia had had enough, and then the rest of our guys did a real good job.

That home run in the ninth helped. d'Arnaud's been a pain in our side this whole series, and he was kind of a pain against other teams I was on. They played a good game tonight. There's nothing you can say about it. It's not what we didn't do. It's what they did do.

Q. Correa and Bregman have both struggled throughout this series. How hard is it for this offense to get going at the level it's accustomed to if those two guys aren't swinging it well?

DUSTY BAKER: Well, you count on those guys, but no one can hit all the time. You get spoiled by the fact that they're hitting almost daily. Again, I keep referring to the law of averages. The more those guys get out, the more they're one at-bat away from a hot streak. That's how hitters think.

It's like, okay, if I'm not hitting today or tomorrow, then somebody's in trouble in the near future, the very near future.

Q. Dusty, in the eighth, when you hit Diaz for Maldonado, obviously Castro is coming in the game, but what did you like hitting him there versus the lefty Matzek as opposed to maybe McCormick or Siri on the bench --

DUSTY BAKER: Well, you know, I couldn't run out of men either. You know what I mean? Matzek historically has been better against right-handers than left-handers, especially this year. This year left-handers have hit him better than right-handers. Castro's been pretty good down the stretch against both.

The reason I hit Diaz first is because I thought he had a better chance of getting on base, and then run Siri for him, which he did his job. He stole a base and was in position to score a run.

Q. Dusty, you got five outs out of Yimi Garcia, three outs out of Raley. Especially starting a stretch like this in this series with three games in as many nights, how important was that, not only to keep the game close, but also to maybe save some guys in your bullpen for a key game tomorrow night?

DUSTY BAKER: Yeah, you get a stretch of three games in a row, you've got to do what you can tonight to hold that game where it was, but we have some relatively fresh arms guys. Yimi didn't go multiple innings, which is big with so many nights.

Q. Dusty, are you going with Greinke? If so, do you expect the kind of effort he gave you? I think people forget last year in the NLCS, he gave you a great effort as you guys tried to come back from 3-0.

DUSTY BAKER: Yeah, we're going to go with Greinke tomorrow, and if anybody knows how to pitch in a big game, it's Greinke. We don't know how long he's going to go, just give us as much quality as you can, and then we'll turn it over to somebody else.