NL DIVISION SERIES: GIANTS v BRAVES

October 5, 2002

Dusty Baker

DUSTY BAKER: Well, the main factor was that Jason had lost control of the strike zone and walked three guys in a row. The danger is with Castilla coming up, Manny Aybar had had relative success against him, and Vinny is prone to the double play. And Manny is probably my best guy down in the bullpen, and also has the ability to throw the sinker and slider to try to get a double play. So that's what led to the pitching change. I know I had a left-hander warming up with Lockhart, but Lockhart had hurt us in the series. We had DeRosa to hit against the lefthander, so we chose to pitch to Lockhart versus a hot DeRosa, who has been one of the hottest hitters in the last month.

DUSTY BAKER: I don't believe in curses, number one. We've got a guy going tomorrow, Livan is 5-0 and then you have Russ Ortiz going Monday. So somebody was predicting it was going to go five -- we were hoping it would not go, but it looks like it's going to go five. We went down there, we won the first one. They won the second one. They came to our house and they won the first one, so if things continue like that, we'll win the next one and then we'll win the first one over there again.

DUSTY BAKER: I'm not concerned. They threw some quality relievers at us. I think they were No. 1 in the League in relief pitching and we were No. 2. No, I'm not concerned. It's just a matter of them pitching outstanding against us at the end of the ballgame.