NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BRAVES v DIAMONDBACKS

October 16, 2001

Bobby Cox

BOBBY COX: It's about like all of them that I've seen. Real good, a lot of strikeouts, not a lot of hits. We did hit some balls. We had some near misses that just were short of the fence going over, four of them. Hit a couple other balls good. Other than that, we didn't (inaudible). But we hit enough balls good to generate a few runs with a bounce here or there. But he was great. He was really good.

BOBBY COX: Yeah, they're all going to talk about Randy for sure, and well they should. But Greg was really good. He gave up one earned run and gets beat, so... I thought he was good. He had his double-play ball working. He got a few balls up early in the ball game but then settled right into it. I thought he pitched excellent baseball.

BOBBY COX: Well I don't know how much damage he's done, but the last run they got, there was two out, 3-2 count. Went 3-2 count on him. I don't know if Mad Dog got a ball up or what, but that was the double. Mad Dog's one of the guys I sat down with before the game starts, the only guy, go over who we want to pitch to and not pitch to. Gonzalez was one guy we thought we would take a few pitches at to pop him up. He in fact jammed him, and it just blooped over first. Counsell is the one that hurt us that inning. You're right. That was damage. If he doesn't get on, they don't get the second run.

BOBBY COX: You can't imagine how many times we've rallied -- we haven't rallied a lot. But every time it's been Jordan at the plate that that's happened. We can smell it coming again. But Randy threw him really three outstanding sliders. They looked low and all that. They were low. But if you're hitting, you're going to swing at them. They're that hard to lay off. Just about impossible to lay off those pitches. But we had the right guy up there.

BOBBY COX: Well, I've seen Schilling twice on TV, Morris twice. That's right up there with them, yeah. Yeah. Those performances are, and Maddux today was good. He didn't get the strikeouts that everybody else gets, gets the job done. But, you know, Cardinals and Diamondbacks series with all that pitching I thought was really something to watch.