NL DIVISION SERIES: PADRES VS DODGERS

October 12, 2022

Austin Nola

Dodger Stadium

San Diego Padres

Pregame 2 Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: Open it up for questions for Austin.

Q. Hey, Austin, over the season you have gotten a great relationship together, a really good rapport it seems like. How comfortable are you now at this point of the season understanding what he wants to do with this stuff, and are there still some times where he surprises you in the course of a game?

AUSTIN NOLA: He is always trying to get better, so sometimes there are some surprises. We'll iron those out in the bullpen before the game. Yeah, definitely getting to a much more comfortable level with him and what he likes to do and the tempo he likes to use. That's just coming with catching him more. I think that's the bottom line.

Q. Are there certain things that you kind of know going into a game, or is each game with him truly its own unique creation?

A. It's unique because have you to see what's working. We could come up with a game plan beforehand, but at the end of the day we have to see how the stuff looks in the game, what's working and how are we going to get strikes in the zone and then chase as well.

Q. I know Yu has all these pitches. He has different versions of his cutter, different versions of his curveball. Most guys just kind of have one. What are the benefits to that, and how do you see kind of hitters reacting as a result of the fact that he can throw a different version of a cutter, kind of explicitly in trying to do so? What kind of advantage does that give you guys?

AUSTIN NOLA: I feel like if it's hard to catch, it's really hard to hit. (Laughing). That's the toughest thing for me. He can throw different versions of the same pitch at any different time.

That really makes it tough on a hitter. If a hitter is looking for a certain spin, velocity, and a movement, and he throws something that looks similar, but then it drops in a different area, it's going to be off the barrel, right? Hitting, you have to get the barrel on the ball. Usually you've got to see the ball to hit the ball, and a lot of times that ball is moving in different directions than what you expected.

Q. Can you speak to the kind of level of uniqueness that is? How many guys can do the things that Yu --

AUSTIN NOLA: I've never seen anybody that can throw four different versions of one pitch and it's called the same. It could be -- the other night he threw -- we call it the cutter, and he threw one at 89, one at 82, and 84. It's the same pitch, but it did different things.

Q. So often we're talking about your defense and your game plan, but you've been pretty good offensively during this playoff run. What's been going well for you? What have you been seeing at the plate?

AUSTIN NOLA: Just keeping it simple. Staying up the middle hard. Something low. Getting good pitches to hit and extending the at-bat to the next guy. That's my goal. That's been our goal going through these playoffs.

We know that's what we have to do. We have to string hits together. We can't rely on the three-run home run all the time.

Q. How have you found PitchCom in the postseason? Can you walk through some of the issues last night with Clevinger with that?

AUSTIN NOLA: Sometimes it gets a little muddled at times. I haven't had much issues with it. I know with the crowd noise being loud, it can be probably hard to hear some of the longer -- curveball slider, probably gets a little harder to hear that. I like it, though. I think it's good.

Q. Maybe a dumb question, but when you call for a curveball, do you know which one is coming necessarily?

AUSTIN NOLA: Sometimes. (Laughing.) Not all the time.

Q. When he snapped off the 67 the other night --

AUSTIN NOLA: I know when that one is coming a lot of times. I don't know when the hard one is coming sometimes. But I'm fine with it. I'm just going to catch it.

Q. Does it change much? If you know it's a curveball, you know it's a curveball, and then --

AUSTIN NOLA: Yeah. We usually talk about it before, the guys, that he wants to do it. A lot of times the two strikes, a lot of times he'll throw the harder one. But, I mean, it's essentially the same pitch. Just one is a lot slower. It does the same exact action compared to what this cutter does.

Q. I've asked you this a couple of times already this postseason, but can you take us through your family's travel schedule with Aaron and you both playing games?

AUSTIN NOLA: Mom and Dad came into New York for the first game, and then they flew out the next morning to watch Aaron pitch the Saturday game against St. Louis. Then they're flying to watch him pitch Game 3 in Philadelphia. They're world travelers practically.

Q. Are they here?

AUSTIN NOLA: No, they're not here. Too much travel.

Q. How tuned in were you to that Game 2? Obviously, you have a game that night, but do you pay attention?

AUSTIN NOLA: We were playing at the same time. Looking up at the scoreboard, you could see that it was 2-0 all the way into the 8th. I'm like, man, I wonder if he has a complete game going, but I didn't look at it any further into it.

Q. You and Aaron both have your schedules. How much do you guys communicate, and how much fun are you guys having doing this at the same time?

AUSTIN NOLA: It's weird because we play -- playing the Mets, he pitched against the Mets a lot and just played against the Cardinals, so we definitely had some conversation on game-planning going ahead.

I called him the day before his start -- the day of his start. He was pretty locked into what he was doing, but I haven't talked to him since. It's been a busy schedule for both of us traveling from -- he was St. Louis to Atlanta and us from New York to L.A., so we haven't had a lot of time to catch up on the phone.

Q. Have you guys talked about making it easier on your parents and meeting up in the LCS?

AUSTIN NOLA: (Laughing). I know, but it would probably drive my parents absolutely nuts and the nerves and stress would be out of the roof. I don't know if I want to do that to their lives. I don't want to take that many years off their life having to deal with that. It would be cool, but we have to take care of business here.

Q. What kind of competitor is Yu? He is often even-keel in the clubhouse and things like that. What is he like behind the scenes when he is working on things, when he is competing? What do you see from him, from Darvish?

AUSTIN NOLA: He is very regimented in what he does in his nutrition planning, workouts, throwing. That's how he is. I mean, it's business all the time.

But it's always fun to get him to smile and mess around. You've got to mix it up in the clubhouse every now and then, and he does.