AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ANGELS v WHITE SOX

October 12, 2005

Don Cooper

DON COOPER: Yeah, you can become stronger for sure. You know, we do things to keep him ready. We have simulated game, we have sidelines. I think it's more of a mental thing than a physical thing. Physically, they're ready. The rest of them are hurt physically. They're gaining strength and that sort of thing. It becomes more mental, "Well, gee, it's been nine days or eight days or whatever it may be day-wise, how am I going to be? I wonder what's going to happen. I wonder if I'm going to have my control." It's more a mental thing. The bottom line is after Jon's simulated game on the sideline, threw the ball very well in both of those outings. If he throws the same way as he did in both of those things, we've got a good chance of winning the game because he's throwing very well. Also, there's a lot of energy and stuff that you're going to have during the games here. I mean, the energy, whatever, it's good, the adrenaline. It's a good thing, that energy, if you can control it. And what I mean by that is from a pitching standpoint, if you can, say, make the glove your first and last throw, the catcher's glove and bring that energy to the catcher's glove, it can be a strength that can take you to heights maybe you've never seen before as opposed to maybe if you don't control that and say to yourself, well, ready or not, here it comes, somewhere up there. That ain't going to cut it. It can get you to depths that you don't want to go to, either. Energy is a good thing. We look at it as a good thing. That's how we're trying to approach this whole ALCS, let's welcome it, let's embrace it and let's go for it.

DON COOPER: Again, it could, but you know, when you see the struggle, I don't know of any starting pitcher during the course of a year that doesn't get some sort of stank. Maybe Denny McLain is down one week and there's some pitchers you have that you see nothing but consistency all year. More often than not that's not the rule. He throws as many pitches when he was throwing. That's what it comes down to every time. Usually the team that wins is the team that executes more pitches. If you throw 100, how many of that 100 can you execute? He wasn't doing it at the time. Buehrle is pretty simple. When you come in on right-handed hitters, get the ball in and miss it. Leave it over the plate. That's the stuff that shows up on "SportsCenter". If you're going to be away to righties, be the glove and if you miss, miss below the glove. You can't get hurt with that stuff. I expect a good game out of Buehrle, but he's come to train us to expect that.

DON COOPER: Any time a pitching staff does well, I think the first thing you've got to look at is the defense and right along with that you've got to look at the catching. A pitcher, any pitcher is better with a good defense behind him. Certainly our defense has played much better this year than it had in the past. Especially if you have sinker ball pitchers, guys that throw ground balls such as Buehrle, Garland, Freddy can do that, Duque is more of a fly ball guy and now Contreras is a guy that gets ground balls, where he hadn't been in the past. So that good defense, that infield defense especially, makes them even better. But getting back to the question about the catcher, the catcher holds the brain. He's the guy that's most physical. He's the guy that everybody is looking at to be the leader and take control of the game and keep that pace going. El Duque gets the game going and AJ does that. And another thing I'll say about AJ and Widger, I haven't felt as comfortable with two catchers in the four years I've been here as I do with these guys because they remember the game plan, and more importantly they carry it out pretty dang good. That's one of the reasons why maybe we've had the kind of pitching staff that we've had this year.

DON COOPER: Well, I think we're going to win every game until the last out is made no matter what the situation. I thought we were going to win last night. It didn't happen. We've known all along here that the pitching was going to take us, from the beginning on. And they have. They've stood up and they've done a fantastic job all the way through. Yeah, we hit that little, quote-unquote, spell, and I don't think it was that long of a spell, it just seemed that each guy had one almost in a row that wasn't quite as good as what they were doing early. Then when we thought we were going to get the break and maybe have the lead and not really coast, that ain't the word and I can't find the right word by now or come close to that, we had to go again because it was getting a little scary during the season. I thought we were going to win it, though, I just didn't know when. I think we were going to win our division. We had to step up again and we had to win with them, and they did, and they responded, every one of them. Every one of them individually, I'm not excluding bullpen, but every starter at one point in the season stepped up once in key games and they were able to be counted on, and they did it. Now we all know that it's not going to get any easier. We win tonight, which is the goal, I mean, Game 3 is not going to be easy and we know that. All the pitchers know. That's the good thing about having a group like we've got, you don't have to tell them. They know the importance of it. They know they have to be the guy that controls the game early to give us a chance to have a fighting chance to win the game.

DON COOPER: By not changing anything, by not changing our approach. Nothing we're doing now has changed from what we did from April 5th, nothing. All preparation is the same. We have more information because there's a lot of advanced scouts going out looking at all the clubs. I kind of pored through all of it and come up with a game plan and we present it the same way. It's just we have a little more information, but the presentation itself and the amount of what we give them is no different. I think if we changed that then maybe they would panic or worry, why are we doing something different. Plus, if we do something new now, how good was what we were doing earlier anyway? We don't overload them, that's for sure. That's what I worry about, overloading people with too much information to where maybe you analyze too much. They say you get paralysis by analysis. We've got the meat and potatoes and we go with that.

DON COOPER: Ozzie reminds me of Billy Martin, and I was only in New York for a short time in '85, Billy Martin. What I notice with Billy, as soon as the game was over, all of you people would run and follow him because you all knew that that would be the story. He would give you everything you needed to do your job, and I think that's good because it takes a lot off players. They may not have to answer a lot of questions. That's a good thing. And also you knew with Billy, again, I wasn't there long, but you knew when he was in the room who was in charge. You knew who was ball. That's a refreshing thing now. Here in Chicago, the inmates don't run the asylum. They have to do things a certain way, they're held accountable, they know what the rules are. And then also they know that they can go to him and talk to him and he's on top of it. It's very easy for them to go and talk to him if there's something going on, a problem, a question. It's a good blend, I think. He's in charge, but also they know and are comfortable enough to go in there and talk to him about anything, and be ready for the answer because you may not get the one you want. I think that's how we kind of do things here.

DON COOPER: Experience, more time. You know, I look at things as a process. They asked me the same question about Contreras. There is no one answer for either Jon or Contreras. It's a process, and it started for Jon -- it started for Contreras when we got him. It started for Jon when he got to the big leagues. A lot of high expectations were put on him. At one time he was the youngest major league pitcher. Some of them were unfair. I thought some of the reporters were hard on him, and some of it was right, deserved. Some of it he brought on himself with some -- I thought some immature things that he might have said or did. That was a couple years ago. But we talked about all that stuff, and I think time, experience, just running out there in the games, you know, what he gave us is a big improvement from the 12 he won the last two or three years. He wasn't a bad pitcher. There was a lot of pitchers who would have loved to have had 12 wins as a 19, 20, 21, 22 year old pitcher in the major leagues, but he wasn't ready to give what he's giving now. Now he's ready. He's matured, worked on some things, working quicker, attacking the hitters, throwing strikes, ground balls, dictating everything, fielding his position to all the runners. It took time, but I think the package has come together. We knew he was capable of more than 12. 18 might have been a little bit above and beyond what maybe we were thinking, but we talked last year right before the season ended that if he came back and didn't win 15 games that was underachieving. All that being said, how much say does a starting pitcher really have over wins and losses? All you can do really is put yourself as a team in a position to win the games. I don't know, I think that the skill part for a starter is to constantly put your team in a position to win by a quality effort. The luck part comes on that given day, do you happen to catch the ball and do you have to throw one more run than the other club so your team can get to win and you individually can get it, number 2. If you look at first half and second half, Buehrle and Garland everything was coming their way, make the plays, score the runs, let's go have a beer. That wasn't happening for Contreras. Contreras pitched a lot of good ball games early where that didn't happen, and then he took off, and now he's the guy that has been getting all those wins. So there's some luck that comes in with getting some of the wins, but you certainly have to have skill to put yourself in that position.