NL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS v BRAVES

October 7, 2005

Bobby Cox

BOBBY COX: He's meant everything, really, ever since he went into the rotation. We got him as a power reliever. We had too many starters to go down; we had three of them, that we tapped into him to get into the rotation. He took right off. His first outing, I think, was in Texas. He went five innings, struck out five or six guys and gave up a couple runs but looked good. We eventually let him go more and more pitches, and I think he may have had one bad ballgame in all those starts. So he's meant a lot. Without him, we wouldn't have recovered, I don't think. He pitched like a guy that was in the rotation, one of those guys making, you know, $7, $8 million.

BOBBY COX: Well, I think it changed the atmosphere in the city a little bit. We've always had good clubs, not always veterans, we've always had young kids but nothing to this extent during my tenure. Six of those kids are from the area. It really caught on. It energized the town, created a tremendous amount of interest in the team. You know, they were kind of the underdog kids, and people root for that. You know, last night, that was a big home run and it did create a lot of energy.

BOBBY COX: What happened really, and I've repeated this story many times, the other guys in the lineup picked it up a notch as soon as all these kids came up, their games got elevated - Andruw Jones, (Rafael) Furcal, (Marcus) Giles, Chipper (Jones) was still out at the time, and (Adam) LaRoche and (Julio) Franco got hot at first base. The young kids just followed suit, actually. I think the other veteran guys - and they're not old veterans, they're young veterans, actually - if they hadn't picked it up a great deal, I don't know what would have happened, if the kids would have responded or not. But everybody was going good at the same times, and they kept going.

BOBBY COX: He really picked it up. I don't know what he's hit in the last 60, 70 ballgames, but he's up there. His on base was way below average. He got off slow but he picked it up. At the right time he picked it up. He's been dynamite. He's as good a fielding shortstop as there is in baseball right now for me. He's got tremendous range, a great arm. Right now he's one of the better leadoff hitters. I know he hasn't been on base much these two games, but he has been up till now. He's a free agent this year and we're hoping to keep him.

BOBBY COX: I'm not going to announce that until after the press conference tomorrow night probably. We'll see. We'll see how tomorrow goes, and I'll talk to all the pitchers today, and, again, tomorrow see how they're feeling. There's so many combinations that we can go to. I think John Smoltz woke up early this morning and felt pretty darn good. That doesn't mean he could start Game 5 by any means but he could be available for Game 5, I think. And if we wanted to move (Tim) Hudson up, we could, and pitch (John) Thompson or (Horacio) Ramirez in Atlanta. It depends how they're feeling tomorrow, actually.

BOBBY COX: Well, the one missing guy in the Astros lineup is old Bags (Bagwell). Basically, well, they had Beltran last year, and that made a wealth of difference, that's for sure. But, yeah, the teams are a little bit different. They had great pitching last year and they still have it, top to bottom they're strong. We have a lot of different faces on the 25-man roster. You know, we're basically the same team, too. Pretty good pitching and pretty good hitting and great defense.

BOBBY COX: Well, Oswalt could be a No. 1 on any team in baseball for me. He's got, as they say, electric stuff, I guess. He's got a number of pitches that are all above average. He's a great competitor. He does a lot of things to help himself win games. You know, he's the No. 1 in my book.