NL DIVISION SERIES: DODGERS v CARDINALS

October 10, 2004

Jim Tracy

JIM TRACY: I apologize for being a couple minutes late, but I needed to huddle up with my players after this game. I cannot tell you how proud I am of this club, what we accomplished this year, the fact that we did everything we possibly could do during the course of this series against an excellent baseball team. You know, for a club that went into spring training, and the speculation being that we had absolutely no chance, number one, of winning our division, much less playing in the division series against the St. Louis Cardinals, I think it goes without saying what we've accomplished in 2004. And as I just finished telling the club, there are building blocks and foundations that you strive to build each and every time that you begin a new season. And I think the fact that we've come up a little bit short this year as far as an opportunity to play for the National League championship and/or be involved in a World Series is still a couple of hurdles that we have to go over. But, you know, we won the National League Western Division for the first time in nine years. We won a playoff game for the first time in 16 years, I believe. There are a lot of very positive things to look at and be proud of. I'm extremely proud of this team. I'm extremely proud of this organization. I'm extremely proud of our fans. And I commend the St. Louis Cardinals for a job well done, and I wish them the very best as they go to begin the NLCS on Wednesday.

JIM TRACY: I think if you look at how the early part of the game unfolded, I think Odalis had five base on balls prior to being removed. As you just suggested, that's obviously base runners in front of some pretty good hitters. What you can ill afford to do, as you're suggesting, is be in that position, where now if a guy hits one, it's not a solo home run, it could be a two- or three-run home run. Although I give Albert Pujols a lot of credit. As I sit here, I haven't seen the replay exactly just yet, but from the way he swung at that pitch, something tells me that he didn't even hit a strike, and he hit it out of the ballpark. But, you know, we gave them everything we had. I think that obviously there's a couple of things. With the exception of our start last night, we didn't make it to the fifth inning in any of the other three games from a starting pitching standpoint, which when you look back at all the criticism that Paul Depodesta took in being right in knowing that if we were to make it to the playoffs, which we did, that starting pitching was something that we felt very strongly was going to have to be addressed. Unfortunately, Brad Penny had an injury where he couldn't continue for us. But when you look back at this series, you just wonder a little bit what an additional starter would have meant to this series as far as us competing in it.

JIM TRACY: Tony and I talked about that before the series started. You know, I think it was just a very professional show of class between two very classy organizations. It's something that you see a lot of, especially in the NHL after you go through a series where you beat up on one another the way they do. To play this series the way it was played, with the intensity with which it was played, I think it said a lot about two very classy organizations.

JIM TRACY: Command, simply put. Bases on balls. Deep counts. The fact that he threw some pitches that were very tantalizing, and they laid off, which helped to create some of the bases on balls. And then in one of the previous questions that I just answered, a couple guys got on. Renteria got the base hit. The way the inning was unfolding, I felt very strongly that we needed to make a change there. That worked out when we struck out Edmonds and Sanders to get out of that inning. But you know that when you go to your bullpen that early in the game, that somewhere along the line you know it's going to come back where there's a possibility, and a strong possibility, of another problem that you're going to have to get through. We had the bases-loaded situation with a run in and bases loaded, nobody out, and Venafro and Carrara did a terrific job to get out of that jam. And then it points back towards the fact of how Jeff Suppan settled down. The other thing that we haven't talked a lot about is that it's very difficult to win a baseball game with two runs and three hits. It's hard to do, especially when you're playing a team like that, that you know if you hold them to four on any given night you've done a terrific job. But we only got two, and we only got three base hits. You know, we had some opportunities early in the game, but we just weren't able to capitalize early on and get the lead. I felt like if we could get the lead with where I was headed with my pitching staff tonight that we could shorten the game up. But you need the lead in order to be able to implement it exactly the way you want to and we weren't able to do that.

JIM TRACY: They are a formidable opponent for whomever it is that they play. When you look at the elements of their club, they are a sound defensive team. They play a lot like the Dodgers defensively in that they don't make a lot of mistakes to give you additional opportunities to score runs. They're as well-managed, in my opinion, as anybody in the game. And their lineup is a very stressful lineup to pitch against. There is no room for error. They have elements to their club where there are certain guys you feel very strongly that you have to get out. If you don't get those guys out, you know, in the case of a Womack or Renteria, that adds an additional element to what they already have from the standpoint that they can manufacture runs from a speed standpoint. So they have a lot of weapons. They're going to be a formidable opponent whomever it is that they play against. I've got to tell you, I don't often sit around and root for one club or the other, but I'm a National League guy. I'm going to root very strongly for the National League, believe me. When you get beat, I think it will go a little bit better for me and our club if, in fact, they win it at all. Because if you get beat by a club like this, and they go on to win it all, then you realize you got beat by the best, and that's what I hope happens.