NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DIAMONDBACKS VS PHILLIES

October 19, 2023

Brent Strom

Chase Field

Arizona Diamondbacks

Pregame 3 Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with Brent Strom.

Q. Paul Sewald was heard on a podcast talking about controlling the space between the inside black and the chalk of the batter's box to make the Phillies hitters move their feet. Being able to pitch inside a little more to make them a little less comfortable, has that been an emphasis over the last couple of days to discuss with the pitchers?

BRENT STROM: Try about two years. It's been an emphasis for two years, okay? Obviously it is a factor in opening up the outer part of the plate. It's not a thing that's relatively new to baseball, I don't think. It's just pitchers have to have the will to do it and whatever you want to call it to do so.

It's a pitch that is part of our repertoire, and it's just a question of us doing it. You saw some of the swings that -- I mean, Turner threw two bats into the seats on fastballs up and in. He had no chance.

But, obviously, you need to get ahead in the count and get strikes to be able to do so, because you're relying on a swing some of the time. So it's a fine line there, but it definitely is part of our plan.

Q. In his last start against the Dodgers, Brandon obviously did a really good job of keeping them off balance and used that changeup a lot. What does he need to do today to have similar results against the Phillies?

BRENT STROM: The changeup has been a work in progress for Brandon. He found it in the Dodger game. That's going to be a key obviously to both lefties and righties. It plays to both. Again, he is going to have to do some work to -- these are not uneducated hitters. They study our tendencies and things like that. So what we need to do is be a little bit unpredictable in our times that we use the changeup and when we use our fastball or the breaking ball below the zone.

There's multiple areas to go to. It's just a question of them not getting into what I call when hitters can kind of centralize. I don't think hitters really hit the ball as it's thrown. I think they anticipate things. I think they sense where things are going, and if they can eliminate pitches, then that makes them that much better.

Q. Strommy, earlier in the season you talked about how you were with working with Pfaadt to spot pitches in the zone. You had game plans for him, and then he just couldn't execute it. Has he gotten better at that as time has gone on, and is that why he's better now?

BRENT STROM: Yeah, I think any time -- you know, he's had a roller coaster kind of season. It's been good and then bad and then good, then bad. Obviously I hope he builds off his last game against a really strong Dodgers team.

He pitched very well for us, and I think it was four and one-third or four and two-thirds and 50-something pitches. One of the his greatest strengths is his strike-throwing ability. I have always believed that if you can throw strikes, you can intentionally throw balls. The ultimate is to be able to throw pitches that are balls that people swing at. That would be the ultimate pitching program.

I mean, I had when Keuchel won the Cy Young award for me in Houston, he threw 48% strikes all season long and won the Cy Young award. But they were just close enough -- what we call pressure pitches -- they're just close enough to where the hitter has to make a decision whether that's going to be called or not. When you do that, you induce more soft contact, and it just usually benefits the pitcher.

Q. In your vast experience, is there a comparative pitcher to Pfaadt that you use?

BRENT STROM: I don't know. I think possibly when we got Charlie Morton over from the club, he was a sinker, slider guy. We took away the two-seam fastball and started to use the four-seamer a little bit more up in the zone, as we did with Cole and those kind of people.

I think that's maybe the comparison I could make. He may not have the devastating breaking ball that Charlie had or has, but it's definitely playable. Especially the sweeper-type thing and the changeup down under. I think his changeup is a little better than Charlie's, but Charlie is also throwing 97, 98 late in his career, so he found some youth over in Houston.

Q. Curious about moving Brandon on the rubber a little bit. What did you see in him that led you to believe that was going to be a good change, and how have you seen that impact his stuff?

BRENT STROM: I've addressed this before. My reasoning for doing it, from his arm slot and the way his ball moves, what I was trying to do was to create the illusion of the ball riding in on right-hand hitters that would look like a strike as it enters home plate. And then play that with the breaking ball that would then separate as it gets to about the halfway point, and then you have the changeup down under. When he was throwing from the far third base side of the rubber, the angle was such that he had to pull balls and that didn't really match up with his other pitches.

So I just thought -- and he had done it before in his career. He moved on his own at some point in time in his minor league career and obviously had success. I just thought that this -- because as we know, I've talked at length about here, is that a 90-mile-an-hour fastball that is coming into a right-hand hitter is a lot faster to the hitter than a 90-mile-an-hour fastball that's down and away. They're two separate pitches, completely separate.

The gun may say 90, but to the hitter, there's a huge difference in the two. What we're trying to do is -- it's not scientific. It's speed people up. Slow them down. Speed people up, slow them down. That's the essence.

Everybody talks about velocity, but if you look at the Wheeler game, if you watch Wheeler, he threw that two-seamer in on right-handed hitters really hard, and it comes out at 95, but it actually plays at 99 to 100. And then you throw the sweeper off of that, which is a huge discrepancy.

I like it when hitters think they can cover everything in the strike zone. When they think they can cover everything, then it's to our advantage. Where we run into problems is when these veteran hitters, these good hitters kind of sense that they have you locked in a box, and they'll take that strike zone and kind of shrink it into a certain area. And then that's where they do the damage.

They've done some damage against us partly because we've fallen behind in counts, but we have a plan going into today that hopefully will deal good results for us.

Q. Overall when the season began, there was a lot of thought about how the game would change with the different rules and what that would mean for pitchers. How has the reality that you have observed over the last seven months been different from what you thought it was going to be in terms of the way that pitchers would adjust?

BRENT STROM: Well, everybody thought that the pitchers, especially the veteran pitchers, would fatigue and not have time between pitches and things like that. I have not seen that with our guys.

If anything, the only thing that we've had an issue with at times is when there may be a discrepancy from what Moreno is calling and the pitcher is calling. And then they're trying to get on the same page, and the clock winds down, and then you are forced into with four seconds to go, I have to throw this pitch. That's been the only issue.

We've cleaned that up quite a bit, but for the most part they've adjusted quite well. There hasn't been any -- nobody has come off the field saying I didn't have -- I'm gassed. Too much time between pitches, things like that.

There are some of the pitchers -- there have been some in the past that have used almost a half a minute in between pitches. Those guys are gone. They're not here anymore.

Q. When you are facing a team like the Phillies that has so many good fastball hitters, is it possible to shy away from that pitch completely, or do you still have to use a four-seam fastball a little bit?

BRENT STROM: As I stated earlier, there are fastballs, and then there are fastballs. Okay? You have to use the pitch -- they're different pitches. So the fastball doesn't disappear because these guys are good fastball hitters. The location of the pitch will be the important thing, okay, and the mix and match of that kind of thing.

Obviously if I had Lance McCullers and we could throw 24 straight curve balls to a certain guy, then that's going to be fine, but that's an abnormal type of thing that happened years ago.

Our fastball is going to play, as long as we understand when and how to use it and where to use it.

Q. Torey said that Zac and Merrill would not go on short rest in this series. What has been your experience with pitchers going short rest in playoff games, and what are the pros and cons of that?

BRENT STROM: Well, if I called Sandy Koufax, he would say three days are too long. He went on two days' rest, and won the seventh game of the '65 World Series. But those days are gone also.

If we can win today and then we roll tomorrow, we'll play tomorrow tomorrow and see what it brings. I think it would be asking too much at this point in time to ask Zac to come back after 80-plus pitches, and then Merrill obviously would have regular rest with the off day if we're fortunate to get back to Philadelphia.

We're not looking too far ahead. I'm looking at 2 o'clock today and see by 5 o'clock where we're at.