AL DIVISION SERIES: YANKEES v ANGELS

October 4, 2005

Mike Scioscia

MIKE SCIOSCIA: Against any club, particularly a club like the Yankees have, you have to finish innings. You have to finish hitters; you have to finish innings. He started off the first couple of innings really sharp and he was making pitches. He made a great pitch to Gary Sheffield after Giambi's single that he poked into right field. You know, he just couldn't put Matsui away, and then obviously Cano hit the ball over Anderson's head with two strikes. After Bart settled in, he pitched terrific baseball. It's just the damage was done early. They got the big hit and they were -- they pitched very well tonight.

MIKE SCIOSCIA: That ball was hit pretty well, and with two strikes, you know, Garret kind of pinches a little bit to try to take a single away. It's got a little bit of pop that way but he squared it up. He hit it over Garret's head. He just hit it, you know, hit it well enough. I don't think there was anything that Garret was going to be able to do. He ran a good route; it was just over his head.

MIKE SCIOSCIA: Well, Mike pitched a terrific ballgame in the summer against us, and it looks like he picked up where he left off. You know, he had good life on the ball. He changed speeds well, threw some terrific breaking balls and pitched his type of game. The early runs were big; I think it helped him settle in a little bit. Not that we could have started anything we wanted to, because we didn't have a lot of first runners on in situations coming up to do the things we needed to. Mike did a great job, pitched a great game, and then their bullpen took over and we just couldn't quite scratch back enough.

MIKE SCIOSCIA: In the sixth inning it was a misread by Vlad. He had the first move sign and he read the pitcher and that cost him the bag; if he had the first move he would have taken the bag. We just need to take advantage. I think you want to try to stay out of the double-play situation and make them work for every out, and so you know we wanted to run there. And actually the ball Erstad hit was probably -- could have been a force out if Cano was able to play that there, and Vlad had run and that pressured him a little bit. We have to stay aggressive. If they give us a base, we're going to catch it to try to scratch back into it and we just didn't get enough.

MIKE SCIOSCIA: He came up with some earlier in the season when he was hitting up higher in the lineup in the 2 spot. He swung the bat very well in the couple of series we saw him. You know, it's a big position for a young guy to be in. You know, he fought off some pitches, got a ball he could handle and squared it up and hit it over Garret's head. So that's obviously a big spot for him and it was big for their club and at that time. So we did get him out the rest of night but that one at-bat, he squared it up and hit it well. That's impressive for a youngster to have that good of an at-bat in his first post-season at-bat.

MIKE SCIOSCIA: Obviously it wasn't not by design then and it's not by design now. We're going to do what we need to do. We have to keep playing our game, we have to do a little better job offensively. Early runs are big in this series. They jumped us early and they pitched well after that, also. You know, we're going to have to do obviously a better job offensively, the first one -- early guys in innings, getting on base, being able to do some of the things we need to do. We were not able to do that tonight, and you know, you've got to credit Mike Mussina for a lot of that. He pitched a real good game for a guy that's supposed to have an elbow a little bit banged up, but he pitched well.