MLB WORLD SERIES: ASTROS v WHITE SOX

October 24, 2005

Phil Garner

PHIL GARNER: Yes, it better. We're not in the best of situations, obviously, but we feel pretty good. We've got a history of being able to do it. We're coming back to our ballpark where we played pretty well. But bottom line is we need to step up and do it. Talking doesn't do a whole lot for it, but we need to step up and play better.

PHIL GARNER: I think Roy in his last -- well, all year long he's pitched well, his whole career he's pitched well in the Big Leagues. But the last few games he's shown a really tough determination and a can-do attitude when he's been on the mound. And we certainly need him to step up and do that again. I really expect that he will do that.

PHIL GARNER: Well, there's a couple of things. We put a roof on this thing because we do have a lot of rain, but it can be uncomfortable here. Part of it is for the comfort of our fans. The other part of it is that we've played with it closed most of the year, I want to say about 85 percent of the time. I find it strange that somebody would say we have to open it now. But bottom line is I think that with it closed it does generate a lot of noise and it's a lot of fun. And I think that -- we play for that. We play for that excitement and that noise. It helps us a little bit.

PHIL GARNER: Well, we've played a little bit of small ball, it's just not winning. We're making some bad pitches and they're not missing them, either. A lot of things are going well for them. As a matter of fact everything has gone well for them so far. When we make mistakes they hammer them; they haven't popped them up and they haven't hit them at anybody. We've made mistakes, and Crede has made some great plays at third base. We haven't managed to get some of those balls to go in for us that they have gone in. We've been hurt by the long ball, which is uncharacteristic of our pitching staff; usually they're pretty tough. To this point it's been a lot of White Sox. And I thought that when Andy had the inning when we got the guy at second, picked the guy after at 1st, I thought we turned that a bit. But it hasn't turned out that way. We still have work to do.

PHIL GARNER: I haven't seen him today. He was sore yesterday, we have him penciled in for Game 5 right now.

PHIL GARNER: Well, we actually -- the process was we were -- by the time the whole thing with Beltran had played out, we were left with nobody else in the League to go to. And we said at the time that we could give Willy a month and see what he would do. He'd been a very good Double-A player and hitting in Double-A, still a young player, but he'd done a good job. Our Minor League people were saying they wanted to give him a chance, they thought he could play up here. And of course we're trying to win a World Series or get to a World Series, certainly, and it's awful hard to go with a 23-year-old kid and say he's going to be great for you. We felt we'd give him about a month, get Lance Berkman back, and make adjustments if we need to. He played well for the month and played solid all year. He's actually hitting the ball harder now than he did all year. But it's been good. It's been great to watch him play. He's a very likable young man. He's very quietly confident. You don't even know he's around, but he sure makes a lot of noise on the field and does a good job. And is he the fastest player in the League? He might be when he gets going, might very well be. So from first to home he might very well be. But I think he's got a good finish. As a matter of fact, coming out of the box, I would say that in the League he's the fastest coming out of the box. And what he really excels at is that last third of the line. He speeds past the bag. And I think a lot of times early in the year we got a lot of calls that didn't go away, because people hadn't seen anybody get across the line that fast. It surprised me, too, I thought there were a whole lot of plays that he was going to be out. And next thing you know he's a step past the bag.

PHIL GARNER: Wandy and Ezequiel.

PHIL GARNER: Those are options.

PHIL GARNER: Roger Clemens is pitching in the 5th game right now.

PHIL GARNER: I'm calm, wouldn't you say so? I've changed. In what way did you mean?

PHIL GARNER: I wouldn't say there's a lot of difference. I hope I've changed -- I would hope I've gotten better and learned some things. I think every year there's something you look at a little differently, and you try to improve on where you think you could improve on. So I think there's probably some changes between now and ten years ago.

PHIL GARNER: Probably not. (Laughter.)

PHIL GARNER: I don't know that it's a necessary advantage to it. It's something we're a little more comfortable with. And I don't know if they're comfortable with it or not. I haven't even looked at the numbers to see how they did in Interleague play. But we are -- our team is a little more geared to that. We use our bench a lot more. So I think probably you could say our team is built more for that, for non-DH role. But right now we're the ones that are in a bind a little bit. So we're at a disadvantage because of where we stand. We're down two games. We need to buckle up and play pretty good, no matter what the style we're playing, DH or non-DH.

PHIL GARNER: I had said earlier that I prefer to go ahead and leave it as it is. I might change my mind on that after a while. But the call didn't go our way last night. Did it change the game? I don't think so. We might have thrown a pitch against them, the next pitch out of the ballpark, he may -- we may strike him out, he may hit a ground ball, you just don't know. I just don't think that was the major play. We had a whole lot of pitches, we did a lot of times, we had opportunities in the game we didn't take advantage of. But there are some times it does seem like that you wish you could -- I applaud the umpires, I think when they get together and I think that's a good plan and I think it's worked and in many cases they've gotten it right when there has been an initial improper call. I do like that. I might reconsider it a little bit, if it's very controlled, not just -- you're just going to start having replays all the time. One of things we've done is we've improved the pace of the game and I wouldn't want to change that anymore.

PHIL GARNER: For a young pitcher he's been very confident, but not only that, he's delivered. He's delivered in these big games for us. We're impressed by it. We feel confident when he's on the mound. Bottom line is Roy doesn't do it all himself. Our team is here because we are a team. We've played well as a team. We've played poorly as a team. We need to step up our game overall. We need Roy to pitch well for us, but we need to step up our game overall.

PHIL GARNER: Well, I think the record will show that we play better at home. So I don't know if it's a disadvantage for them or an advantage for us the fact that we're home. It seems to be to our advantage a little bit. We seem to play a little better at home. But I think most all teams do. Just take anybody's home, any teams that win usually play better at home than they do on the road. So we're comfortable here. It's a fun ballpark because there's angles in the outfield that make it different than most stadiums. So those little nuances can come into play. We talked about Tal's Hill, we talked about the Crawford Boxes. Your third base is not a levee, but we have things that come into play here that people are going to have to work with.