NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: PHILLIES VS PADRES

October 19, 2022

Bob Melvin

Petco Park

San Diego Padres

Pregame 2 Press Conference

Q. How much do you expect the matchups between the pitchers and the hitters to evolve over the course of the series? Because these teams haven't seen each other very much.

BOB MELVIN: Yeah, I mean, shoot, it's a seven-game series, so at some point in time you're going to get a little bit of a handle on the bullpen. With any starting pitcher, and these guys are veteran guys, so our guys have faced them before. Each year it's a little different. They pitch a little bit differently, a lot of times make adjustment in between games.

But it's not like we have not seen these guys before. I think it's more some of the guys in the bullpen that, if you have faced them, it's limited at-bats and kind of getting a feel for them. The starters, I think you get a feel for them a little quicker, yet they're really good.

Q. Sticking with more of a longer series concept, strengths and weaknesses of a ballclub, which ones sort of get emphasized or exposed more over the course of a longer series?

BOB MELVIN: I think it's more about what your strengths and weaknesses are. In a seven-game series, if you play good defense or you don't play good defense, sometimes that comes out. Now you want to try to put balls in play and so forth.

But, you know, it just depends on how you match up with the other teams and what their strengths and weaknesses are.

At times, we've been able to do everything pretty well this year. Maybe not production as much as we would like, as far as hitting homers and so forth. But I think we have the ability to play well in any particular area. And when we do, it's usually clean games where we're playing good defense and they're crisper games.

We have the ability, obviously, in close games to stay there at the end and have a chance to finish them off. We did not do that last night.

Q. I know the postseason is different than the regular season. You're not taking any sort of moral victory or whatever. Every game that you've played in the postseason has been clean. Like you haven't cost yourself games. What does that mean in terms of -- what do you take from that?

BOB MELVIN: Yeah, there's a psychology that you feel like you're always in games. I think the other side notices, too, that we're going to have to beat these guys. They're not going to beat themselves.

I think that's good for our psychology and good for the other team to know that. So, yeah, I think that is one of the strengths of our team is that we play -- as you say, play pretty clean and keep ourselves in games.

And therefore, even if you're not doing much offensively, maybe it's a walk and it's a hit and all of a sudden one big hit can turn the game.

Q. Austin Nola can take momentum away, if there were any, but you guys have done a pretty good job of taking -- maybe something you did in the ninth inning and having that work for you later in a series or whatever. How is that?

BOB MELVIN: Yeah, you know what, if you look at it, too, we've also been pretty good against good starters. We don't necessarily knock them out. Sometimes we -- we're on our way to making him throw some pitches yesterday, and then second, third and fourth were different.

But we've had pretty good approaches against really good starters. Did not happen for us yesterday. But I think that is something that we can take in confidence-wise going into any particular game is we feel like there's different ways to potentially beat a good starter.

But this guy is really good. He pitched well against us last time. We beat him 1-0, and it was a Nola hit that beat him. We'd take that again today, but hopefully we make him work a little harder.

Q. Joe Game 3?

BOB MELVIN: Joe Game 3.

Q. What are some of the factors that will go into what Game 4 might look like?

BOB MELVIN: Yeah, it depends on who we use in the bullpen in the next couple games and just kind of what the feel is going into 4. We have a decent idea of what we're going to do but not to the point where we're going to announce it yet.

Q. How would you describe what Luis Garcia has meant to this bullpen this season?

BOB MELVIN: Oh, he's fantastic. Guy throws 100 miles an hour, ball is moving all over the place. He's gotten better as he goes along. His breaking ball has gotten better. The split has been a good pitch for him, too, with lefties.

If you look at the numbers overall, he's had a little tougher time with lefties, but I think the split has gone a long way and us using him through a certain portion of the lineup.

But like I said, when you have that kind of sinker and it's coming in there pretty quickly, you've got to start your bat early.

Q. Is Austin running the hitters' meeting today, and is he in charge of all things offense until their bullpen comes in?

BOB MELVIN: Well, I'll tell you, I think until last game, he would have told you he shouldn't run it. He got his first hit off him in a huge situation.

What does he got, five or six at-bats off him? He's probably caught him once or twice in the offseason. He will have some say in it for sure.

But we've faced him. You know. You see a lot of video. We have guys with at-bats off him. It's maybe the little nuanced things that he can add, so I'm sure he'll speak up today in our hitters' meeting.

Q. With guys who are strike throwers, how do you thread the needle in terms of not letting too much go by but also the pitch count was so down for a couple innings last night?

BOB MELVIN: Yeah, you have to feel that out early. A lot of times really good starters take a while, maybe an inning or two, to get into the rhythm. He was on it right away. We felt like we needed to be aggressive because we knew we were going to get some fastballs.

It's the pitch complement as far as fastball to off-speed is different with Nola today. But that was one of -- we talked about, okay, if he gives you a good fastball to hit early in the game, go ahead and do it.

In the first inning, we made him work a little bit, maybe a little too aggressive after that. It's tough to tell, though, when a guy's stuff is that good, and he changed his pitch mix a little bit as the game went along, too, second and third time around, so he made it tough on us.