NL DIVISION SERIES: BRAVES v ASTROS

October 10, 2001

Larry Dierker

LARRY DIERKER: He'll have a bullpen today.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I think a lot of people are skeptical, both in the stands and in the press box. And I don't see that we can do much about that, except win the series. I think if we do that, it will go away. The same was true after the Giants series. Then we went to St. Louis and won two out of three and we were champions again. But unless we win this series with the Braves, it's still not going to be good enough for most people.

LARRY DIERKER: I think the dynamics are a lot different. Tony's been to the World Series and achieved the ultimate goal and has managed longer and has more wins. The fact that we've won four out of five divisions is something that we're very proud of. I think it's probably a sign that we've been more consistent for the long haul than any other team in our division. And I think the long haul is probably a better test than a five-game series. But that being said, you still have to win the five-game series, and we've failed to do that three times in a row and lost the first game of the fourth one. I don't think we're out of this one by any means. If we can get a win today, which may be difficult, but if we do, we're right where I wanted to be going to Atlanta.

LARRY DIERKER: I think it's been a little more difficult than I anticipated. I guess because we're a couple years removed from the last time it happened. And I really didn't anticipate that one game, win or lose, would be that big of a deal. But it was. I think mostly by nature of how it occurred, you know, having a chance to hold a lead in the eighth and ninth inning and win a game is just something we've been able to do most of the time with our bullpen. But not only failing at that, but breaking down defensively, giving up home runs and not even coming close to succeeding has brought a lot of those skeletons back out of the closet.

LARRY DIERKER: Nothing. What I will do is go around to some of the players - and I already have done with probably all but one of the guys I wanted to talk to - and just settle them down with a pat on the back and a vote of confidence. I found that to be more effective to work through individuals and to not try to have a team meeting. And it's a different sport, I think, than football. Everybody thinks about Knute Rockne, and you get a guy who's really charged up to go out there and knock everybody down. But that's not the way you succeed in baseball. So I think one thing, one conclusion I've come to over the years, is you're better off to talk to people individually than you are to call everyone together and talk to them.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, first of all, let me say that you cannot predict the future from looking at the past. So anything that we do is subject to failure. Sometimes things we worry about turn out to be no worry at all. But in this case, Jackson has been throwing the ball pretty well lately. He's a veteran pitcher that has playoff experience. Probably more importantly than that, Dotel hasn't thrown the ball very well at all since we took the one-week break during the incident in New York and Washington. There's only been one inning, I think, where we really felt like he was in synch, and that was in St. Louis. I am encouraged he's on his way back to being in the kind of groove he was in prior to September 11th, but I still haven't seen the evidence. And on top of all that, the Braves, up and down their line-up, have hit him hard - home runs, batting average, everything. That can be an aberration. When he throws well, nobody's going to hit him. It won't prevent me from using him in this series. But in the first game, based on how the two guys have been throwing lately and how the various hitters have hit Jackson and how they've hit Dotel, I thought Jackson was the logical choice.

LARRY DIERKER: I'm not sure if he did or not. He's supposed to throw a bullpen today and I would guess that he probably has done that already. But I haven't talked to Burt.