NL DIVISION SERIES: BRAVES v ASTROS

October 8, 2001

Larry Dierker

LARRY DIERKER: Well, he looked good. He looked like he was throwing without favoring his leg in any way. He fielded a few bounces, threw about 60 pitches. I think he was up to full speed - as much as you can get up to full speed, you know, in a workout. So it looks good for him being on the roster for the first round. And if it goes to Game 4, he'll probably be the starting pitcher for Game 4. The only other thing about Roy is that he was in about the same position when he made his last start and he reinjured himself. So even if he has this extra rest and is throwing a few more times in between like he did this time, there's still some concern that he could injure himself again.

LARRY DIERKER: He probably could. But after what Shane Reynolds did yesterday, Game 3 falls right on his day, and he'll pitch that game.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, you know, everyone else is healthy. Every day I get a sheet from the trainer and it lists the number of players and pitchers that have been treated for some sort of injury. And, generally speaking, there's six or eight guys from the playing positions and six or eight pitchers that are getting some sort of treatment for something. But the last line in that sheet is whether they're limited or whether they're no activity or whether they're able. Right now, everyone is able.

LARRY DIERKER: I think that yesterday was a very positive event for the team as we try to get through the first round of the playoffs for the first time. We had to beat perhaps the hottest team in the league in the second half of the year at their own ballpark, where they have the best record of anybody in the league, and we were going against some of their best pitchers. To be able to get two out of three from them in those circumstances is a big lift in terms of confidence. So even though we risked using Shane and still not getting the wildcard or still not getting the division, by getting the division, I think it turned what could have been maybe a little bit of a negative into a big positive.

LARRY DIERKER: I feel better about this club playing on the road than any team that we've had, but I think the '98 club was probably a stronger club overall. We won 102 games that year and won the division easily. That was the year that Kevin Brown beat us a couple times, knocked us out of the playoffs. You know, when you face pitchers of that caliber, whether it's Maddux and Glavine, or whether it's Schilling and Johnson, you know that it's no embarrassment to get beat, and you might get knocked out in the first round despite the fact that you played well. I think this team will play well. It has a veteran quality to it. I think a lot of us feel maybe a little bit more centered and a little bit more focused this time because the hoopla and the hype surrounding the playoffs is familiar with a lot of the guys on the team. So I think it will be easier for them just to concentrate on playing baseball rather than trying to do too much or get too worried if we lose a game. I think this team is very resilient. We lost, I think, eight in a row in May, and we came out of that. We lost six in a row right at the end of the season, and we salvaged the season in St. Louis. We lost that first game of the double-header in Pittsburgh where we had a 7- or 8-run lead in the last inning with two outs, nobody on, and we lost that game. But it was the first game of a double-header. We came right back and won the second game. This has been a team that has been able to recover well. Obviously in a short series you don't have much time to recover, but I think we're all aware of the time frame, and I'm pretty confident with this club coming into this series. But I'm sure Bobby Cox will tell you the same thing.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, with Miller on the mound on Friday in St. Louis there was probably just as much pressure. You know, we had a six-game losing streak in progress. If we lost two games in St. Louis, we could conceivably get knocked all the way out of the playoffs. He goes out there and gives up one run in six innings, only three hits, strikes out seven guys. He was as dominating as he's been in any of his starts this year. He has proven in the second half that he is a leader of this pitching staff despite his relative lack of experience. Just the toughness he's shown this year against the better teams in the league makes me feel very confident that he'll pitch a good ball game. That doesn't mean he'll pitch a better ball game than Maddux. He could pitch a good ball game and still lose. That almost happened Friday night. We only won 2-1. Obviously, Williams pitched a pretty good ball game, too, but didn't win. I hope we'll score enough runs that he can win.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I don't know about that. I think probably the thing that will determine whether we are able to hit those two guys or not will be the size of the strike zone. Because as you know, it can vary a little bit from one umpire to the next. If those guys are getting the strikes off the edge of the plate or if you have a relatively large strike zone, they can probably work the corners a little bit better than some of our pitchers. However, if you had a smaller strike zone and you were forced to throw a ball in there, I think that Wade Miller's got a little bit livelier stuff. As far as the factor of home or road, I don't think that's as important in trying to face Maddux and Glavine as the size of the strike zone.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I think we've got a better bullpen than we've ever had before. We have four guys out there who have had a lot of experience pitching in the ninth inning trying to save a game. I don't think - I know we've never had that before. I'm not sure any team's ever had that before. That gives you some comfort. Usually late in the game one run can win it or lose it. Anybody can give up a run - Wagner, Dotel, Williams, Jackson. They've all given up a run or two at times this year. Overall, I think it's a stronger bullpen. As far as the bench, I feel good when I have Daryle Ward and Orlando on the left side. All year long we've been looking for the guy that's equal to them on the right side and we haven't found that guy. A man on third, less than two outs, Tony Eusebio is about as good as anybody in the league. Usually, he doesn't strike out, and most of the time he can get the run in. He doesn't have the kind of home run power those other guys have. Chris Truby is going to be on our post-season roster. He is a guy that does have some power and demonstrated that - and RBI ability as well - in the second half of last year and the first part of this year before we got Vinny Castilla. I have some confidence in him. I think we're stronger from the left side in terms of pinch hitting.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I think the Braves are a tough opponent in post-season because they have so many players that have been through it. They have a lot of guys that have been through the first round and advanced. But obviously the last couple of times the Braves have gone into post-season, they haven't gotten the desired result. They've stopped somewhere short of the World Series. So in that respect they're a little like us. The last three times we've been in, we've been one series and out. They're getting a little older with basically the same players. We're getting a little older with basically the same players. You know, it figures to be a good series. I don't think that our guys are intimidated by them. I think we all realize that they're probably a better team than their record suggests and that they will be as worthy an opponent as we could possibly play in the post-season, up to and including the World Series. Everybody knows what the Braves stand for. I expect they'll be very hard to beat.

LARRY DIERKER: We're going to have a roster for everybody. We expected to have that and handed out first, but we didn't get that down from the office in time. But you'll have that before you leave here.

LARRY DIERKER: I don't know. You know, no one can really predict what's going to happen in a five-game series. I don't think they're quite as strong as they have been in some years, but I don't think we're quite as strong as we were in '98. That said, if we do win and advance we might have to say at the end that we're better than we were in '98. If you go on regular season records, they may have dropped back a little, as we have.

LARRY DIERKER: I don't really think it's important for us to feel like the underdog or the favorite. A lot of times people will ask me about my team, you know, "What is the mood of the team? How do the guys feel about this or that?" I can never really answer that question because I don't know how everybody feels. But the way I feel is that I don't care if we're the underdog or the favorite. What I think is important is winning at least one game at home before we go to Atlanta.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, that was a very unusual series with the Giants. I was pretty angry about losing all three games, you know, knowing that if we won even one of those games we'd assure ourselves of a spot in post-season. Probably a lot of that was frustration. Some of it, too, was the nature of the spectacle. It was a spectacle. It wasn't just baseball; it was Bonds first, then baseball second. That disturbed me a lot. And at one point, I told somebody I thought maybe if we had 40,000 fans, we had 30,000 of them cheering for Bonds and ten for us. Somebody said it was probably the other way around, except those 10,000 were pretty loud. Maybe that was it. But we all heard it. I don't think we'll hear that when we play the Braves.

LARRY DIERKER: To be honest, I think we've been a better road team than a home team this year. The record will show that. However, I think when we have all of our pitchers healthy - I mean, for a brief period there where we had Carlos Hernandez in the rotation and not giving up any runs, and of course Oswalt winning 14 games and hardly ever losing, Miller pitching well, Reynolds pitching well and Octavio pitching well, I felt like we could have had at that point possibly the best rotation in the business - at least in our league. That was relatively short-lived. While that was happening, we were winning at home like crazy. It wasn't because it was a hitting environment, it was because our pitchers were able to deny that opportunity to the other team. It wasn't so much because we scored a lot. It was because we were able to pitch here. I think that will also carry through to the playoffs. The teams that pitch the best will win, and it's more difficult to pitch well here at home. So it's quite a challenge for our pitchers and the Braves' pitchers as well.

LARRY DIERKER: I think the first year that we played them they had already been to and won the World Series with a lot of the same guys they had. We weren't really a young team, but we were certainly new to post-season. I think we kind of felt like it would be a Cinderella story if we could beat the Braves. If you feel that way, you're about half beat before you start. It's like, "Oh, well, we could beat the Braves. We might be able to beat the Braves," instead of saying, "This is another series. They're a good team. We have a chance to beat any team." I think the mindset this year will be more like that than thinking of our prospective victory for us like a Cinderella story. I think we're going to win when we feel like we're capable of winning.

LARRY DIERKER: If you thought that I did that intentionally, you give me credit for being a lot more intelligent than I really am. If it had that effect, I'm happy about it. But I think I was probably uniquely able to or subjected to things that made me feel that way. In other words, the minute I stepped on the field every day of that series, I started answering questions about Bonds, and I didn't stop until batting practice was over and I went up to the clubhouse. So I was being bombarded with not only, you know, "Is he going to set the record?" But, "Are you going to walk him? Are you going to pitch to him? How are you going to pitch to him?" Over and over every day. That will make you sort of irritable. It will make you even more angry if we lose all the games, which we did. So what I said was just a reaction to what I felt. It wasn't intended to deflect the fan situation away from the players and toward me.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I never know how to feel about the team offensively because all hitters are prone to streaks and slumps. Nobody really knows how to stop a slump. Usually you just have to battle through it. Sometimes it's relatively short; other times it takes longer. Sometimes nobody on the team is hitting, and sometimes everyone's hitting. More often some of the guys are doing pretty well and some of the other guys aren't doing so well. But the nature of the way your offense comes and goes is a mystery to all of us in baseball. The only thing we can hope for is we get some pitches to hit and hit them. That sounds simple, but that's what it amounts to - when pitchers make good pitches, hitters make outs. We have to hope when Maddux and Glavine make mistakes, that we hit them. They make mistakes like everyone else, but they don't make as many. You really can't afford to let them get away with very much and expect to beat them. We have to be at our best offensively. We were pretty good yesterday. Will we be tomorrow? I don't know.

LARRY DIERKER: I don't think any of us will like to play at noon. We're all nocturnal. That's the nature of the business. It's a little tougher to get up, get going, take batting practice, get your mind in the right place, get your body feeling loose and ready when you have to do it at noon as opposed to even one or one-thirty. We're used to one or one-thirty once in a while. We're more used to seven o'clock. The last time we were in the playoffs with the Padres, we had to play at six o'clock on the coast in the twilight. It was hard for everyone to see the ball. I don't think that these games are started on the basis of when can the players play the best. You know, they're started on the basis of who's going to watch and where. That may not be ideal, but that's the way we earn a living, you know. We have to listen to television people about when they want us to play because the more people that watch, the more money they make. The more money they make, the more money they can afford to give us. And that's how we get paid. I know that some of the guys will not like that or even understand that logic, but that will be the same in our clubhouse as in theirs.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I don't know what's going to happen. Because even though they've struggled in three post-seasons, that probably doesn't cover more than 30, 40 at-bats. However many at-bats it is, it's not enough to have a representative sample of how good they are. Generally speaking, hitters are going to become what they are if you give them enough at-bats to prove it. One of the examples of that is something that I studied one time when I was broadcasting, which was "Mr. October," Reggie Jackson. When I added up everything that he'd done in October, it looked exactly like Reggie Jackson, because he had some horrible series and sort of offset those wonderful series that everybody remembers. When you added it up, it was just him. I feel the same way about Bagwell and Biggio. They're likely to start hitting, particularly if they get a couple of hits in the first game. But there's no guarantee of it. The only way I could guarantee it is if we got in the post-season ten years in a row like Reggie did. Then I'd say, "These guys are about due to really start hitting."