NL DIVISION SERIES: DIAMONDBACKS VS DODGERS

October 9, 2023

Paul Sewald

Dodger Stadium

Arizona Diamondbacks

Postgame 2 Press Conference

Diamondbacks - 4, Dodgers - 2

Q. What is the mindset for you guys having won two games here and knowing what that means while also kind of understanding that there's still another game to go?

PAUL SEWALD: Really excited to leave LA with two wins. And that's the most important thing. But as everybody's favorite Laker said, "The job's not finished." It's not finished. We have to win another game.

We're going to take tomorrow and enjoy it and then we're going to get back to work on Wednesday and see what happens.

Q. What have you made of kind of the way this bullpen has fallen into place before you and kind of Torey's confidence to go with the guys he did in the sixth inning there and the way it all played out? Is that what you've seen this bullpen do for a couple of months now?

PAUL SEWALD: Yeah, it was brought on because things had not been going great in the pen in Arizona for the first few months of the season but the rest of the team felt they had a playoff team, and I was excited to come over and see what I could do to help.

I think I was a big step in making sure everyone kind of took a step back and relaxed and settled into the eighth or seventh and go from there.

And I want to give Ryan Thompson a lot of credit when he got here it right at September 1st and took over kind of that seventh inning role. It really started to blend into six, seven, eight, nine, everybody knew their role.

And Salty, a rookie, what's he have, eight, nine innings career and he's coming in some huge situations here in the postseason and handled them really well.

It makes my job a lot easier when they keep putting up zeros towards the back of the game and then I have a comfortable lead.

Q. You probably have been asked this a lot in Arizona, but curious, were you surprised you were traded, just given where Seattle was at the time and where they finished and how close they were?

PAUL SEWALD: Man, it was a wild couple of weeks. I thought I was going to get traded at the end of June. I felt like, yeah, we had really struggled; we weren't playing well. Had a great July. I had the best record in baseball in July. Then I kind of thought I wasn't. Then I walk into the office and got told I was traded. It took a little bit of time to kind of process that.

I really enjoyed my three years in Seattle. I had really blossomed into somebody that would be wanted in a trade there.

And a lot of friends, a lot of family and a lot of great memories there, but I was excited to come to Arizona. We love Phoenix and excited to jump into a team that had really played well for most of the season a put us in a position where a closer might be the last piece that you need to get to the postseason.

Q. I know you haven't been there the whole season, obviously, small part. But can you sense that this team is playing its best baseball right now, which is what you want to do?

PAUL SEWALD: They're definitely playing the best since I've been here for the two months, obviously. They played great at the beginning of the year, put themselves in a good position to have that bad July that we had.

And I just kept telling people when I got here, if you have five good months and one bad month, you will play in October. Once we got past that really bad six-week stretch, I think we've played really well.

Coming to the postseason losing four straight, not really scoring runs, but anyone who has been here before knows that when that first pitch was thrown in Milwaukee it is 0-0, everyone's ERA and batting average is 0 and you get a fresh start, and we just capitalized on every opportunity so far in the first four.

Q. Is there something to the old saying, when you win, winning builds more confidence? This seems like a very confident team, at least the optics look very good.

PAUL SEWALD: I think we're playing with nothing to lose. Why would we play with anything to lose? We were the sixth seed. We weren't supposed to win in Milwaukee. No one picked us to win there. No one is going to pick us to beat the Dodgers when we haven't played well against them.

I think we're going out there with a lot of confidence, not afraid to lose.

It certainly helps when you score six in the first and three in the first to feel better about yourself, obviously.

Nothing to take away from our huge first innings -- it's easy to play downhill. It's a lot harder to play uphill. So scoring in the first is huge especially with 60,000 people here and kind of calming them down a bit.