AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: YANKEES v MARINERS

October 17, 2001

Lou Piniella

LOU PINIELLA: I think he makes more breaking pitches. I don't know if he was throwing harder or not. But, you know, he competes awfully well. He can pitch. He did a good job today, obviously.

LOU PINIELLA: You're not going to score as many runs in post-season, and you've got to hit good starting pitches. For us to win this series, we're going to have to hit their starting pitching.

LOU PINIELLA: Did I have anything to say to him?

LOU PINIELLA: No, not at all. Paul is dangerous. He's got all that post-season experience and he's had a heck of a career. No, we were supposed to throw him a nice sinker down and away there but the ball just stayed up over the middle of the plate and he hit it out.

LOU PINIELLA: Well, I told him it looked out from the dugout, and whether he was out or not, he still looked out from the dugout. (Laughter.) It was a heck of a throw. He said he got his foot in. To me, it looked like the throw beat him, obviously. The infielder got the glove down in time or not, I can't tell. He looked out to me, anyway.

LOU PINIELLA: They have got good starting pitching. We know that. Our job is to hit their starting pitching. They spend quite a bit of money on it, and it shows. (Laughter.)

LOU PINIELLA: I don't know. He threw 110 pitches in six innings, which is really a high pitch count for Aaron. Whether some of those pitches were strikes or not, I can't tell the width; I can tell up or down, but I can't tell in or out. But Eddie is a pretty good umpire. You can hang your hat with him. He's very good at balls and strikes. You know, obviously, when our guys are pitching, we like to see the home plate expanded a little bit, and when their guys are pitching, contract it some, but that's not going to happen. (Laughs). But he did throw a lot more pitches than he has in prior starts for likewise innings.

LOU PINIELLA: I think the inning that we had runners on second and third and we only got one run in was the inning that I thought that we had a chance. Then Boone gets the base hit. Edgar ran him to a 3-2 count or took him to a 3-2 count and then struck him out and then the double play ball. When did we score? The fifth? Guys like Pettitte, you have to get them early. Once they settle in and get a good rhythm out there, it becomes a little more of a difficult chore.

LOU PINIELLA: Well, Moyer pitched our final game, so he's going to pitch on regular turn on Saturday. Garcia, if he didn't pitch tomorrow, his turn would fall on Saturday, too, and we want to give both of them two games in this series, if it goes that far. So our only choice, basically was to bring Freddy back tomorrow. If not we would have had to have done it on the back ends of it, both pitchers coming back on three days' rest, assuming the series went seven games. So we started off with Sele and we go with Garcia -- he only threw 82 pitches the other day. And then we've got Moyer on Saturday and then we go with our 4 starter Abbott on Sunday. So, once that first divisional series went five games, we were basically going to stay the best way we can to get, if we get the series back to here, we'll have Freddy and Moyer for game 6 and game 7. That's as good as we can do.

LOU PINIELLA: We got him out there. He got his feet wet. McLemore will be at shortstop tomorrow. Carlos has had really good success against Pettitte, .715 coming into the series. He did fine. He got three at-bats and played well in the field. About the only thing we might do when we face Pettitte again is I might move him back further in the lineup.