NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BRAVES v DIAMONDBACKS

October 20, 2001

Bob Brenly

BOB BRENLY: I think if I had to put my finger on one single thing, he located the ball extremely well in the games that he pitched for us, and also that he pitched for Tampa Bay against this team. He's got tremendous stuff. We know that. It's been his reputation throughout his career. In the two ball games he pitched against them, he really used all of his pitches the way you're supposed to.

BOB BRENLY: It's no trip to the beach trying to score off him in the first inning either. He's truly one of the great pitchers in the history of this game. There are certain strategies that we've tried in the past against him with varying degrees of success. But like all great pitchers, if you allow him an opportunity to get comfortable on the mound and fall into a rhythm, he's going to be very tough to get to. So like everybody else that goes up against Greg Maddux, we're going to try to jump him early as best we can.

BOB BRENLY: The only conversation I had with Albie was when he was on 19 losses and I gave him an opportunity, if he wanted to, to duck out of his last couple starts to avoid losing 20. He wanted nothing to do with that. He wanted the ball. He wanted to go out and pitch and probably pitched two of his best games of the season his last two starts against the Dodgers and against the Brewers with that 20-loss season hanging over his head. I had tremendous respect for Albie. I played with and against a lot of pitchers who would have taken that out. He wanted nothing to do with it. So that showed me his head was in the right place and I had a lot of confidence sending him out there.

BOB BRENLY: It was his side session before his start against the Dodgers.

BOB BRENLY: Well, I don't know if I would have believed it if I would have known that at the time. But we have a lot of confidence in our pitching staff for obvious reasons. They've been able to do it throughout most of the regular season, and throughout the post-season, what offensive support we give them, they're able to make it stand up. That's a testament to the kind of competitors that we send out to the mound on a daily basis. We feel we should be able to score a lot more runs, but as we said many times in these meetings before, the caliber of pitching that we're going up against is not likely to give up bunches of runs. So we anticipate that every game is going to be a one-run ball game.

BOB BRENLY: Well, that was obviously very unusual circumstances, three-and-a-half-hour rain delay, he injured his ankle early in that ball game. I think walks, more than anything else, hurt him in that start. I believe he walked three guys while he was in there. I don't have a way to excuse it. It was just an unfortunate bad start at the wrong time. But I don't think Albie's head was in a bad place; he just made some bad pitches.

BOB BRENLY: Well, it's hard to say, because throughout the entire second half I feel that he's had a great approach every game. When he gets in trouble, he has a tendency to lift the ball a little bit, try to pull too much. But as we've seen throughout the second half and carrying it right into the post-season, he's staying on the ball, taking his base hits to the opposite field. When pitchers make a mistake on the inside part, that's a ball he's pulling hard to right. To use a baseball term, he's locked in right now. He's seeing the ball very well. He's laying off the tough pitches. When he gets a pitch he can handle, he's hitting it hard.

BOB BRENLY: Well, that can be particularly frustrating, because you know going into a ball game exactly what Tom Glavine is going to do. You try, as you might, to counteract that and make adjustments to it. He has proven over the course of his career that he is going to stick with his game plan come hell or high water. I thought we made some very good adjustments to him. We hit some balls hard to the opposite field, which is what you have to do. But because the Braves overshift their defense so much when he's on the mound, we just continue to hit the ball right into the teeth of the defense. It's worked for him for whatever it's been, 12, 13, 14 years. I don't think it's going to change.

BOB BRENLY: At this time of year the pitch counts do not matter, especially for those two guys. I touched on it briefly last night about limiting the pitch count during the year so we could extend them at this time of the year. When you talk about extending Johnson and Schilling, I'm not talking about 125, I'm talking these guys could probably go 150, 160 pitches. That's the physical condition that they're in right now, the mental shape that they're in right now, and the competitive nature of those two guys, as ridiculous as that sounds, I wouldn't put it past either one of those guys. With the lead in the ninth inning we thought about going to the bullpen, but what Curt Schilling has got going in this post-season is something special and I thought he deserved a chance to go out there and finish that ball game.

BOB BRENLY: Well, I certainly hoped for it. Looking at this team and looking at the history of the individual players and seeing how they all meshed together, this is what we've been drilling into our ballclub since the first day of spring training. We have a team that's capable of getting to the big dance. It's a question of going out there, getting the job done, doing what it takes to win a ball game. If we have to pitch a shutout, we pitch a shutout. If we need six innings of zero runs, that's what we need to win the ball game today. If we need a homer, a sac. bunt, whatever we need to do to get to this position, let's do it on a daily basis. The guys who cover us all year know we're one of the most boring teams in baseball. We show up every day and keep grinding. That's been my experience in this game, usually that's the best attitude, the best approach to take.

BOB BRENLY: It is a little bit of a concern just because of the kind of bullpen that we have. Our guys rely on location and movement, and the more they pitch, the better they get. With that in mind, when it has become apparent that we're not going to use certain guys in a ball game, we've had them throwing in the bullpen. Mike Morgan threw in the ninth inning last night just to get some work in. Everybody down there has thrown on the side just to maintain some semblance of sharpness so that if we do need to call on them, they can come in and do the job.