NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: METS v CARDINALS

October 11, 2000

Bobby Valentine

BOBBY VALENTINE: Mike is a good pitcher where he makes his pitches. He pitched both sides of the plate. And I think it is real short sample there where he pitched a game. I think they only scored one run. So the ERA will be down, but he is a good pitcher, so -- you know, he has had success against most everyone.

BOBBY VALENTINE: The roster moves. Matt Franco is added for Derek Bell. The thinking is just that we played the whole season with a six-man bullpen. We have a six-man bullpen. Now we feel we could play a two-game series, three-game series and two-game series with the same bullpen. Other than Christiansen, they are all righthanded in the bullpen another lefthander shouldn't be that much a burden for us to carry. In the last series we played, the only vulnerability that we were exposed to was the time where we had to move Robin from third to first and put McEwing in at third. We feel that that vulnerability is covered a little with a guy who could play third and first in Matt Franco, another guy.

BOBBY VALENTINE: We tried to talk about it as much as possible and we had a team dinner last night where all the coaches added a bit of their input. Most of the coaches, anyway, and Steve and all of his staff had their input and then we finalized it this morning. It could have gone either way. I think these roster things are one -- it is like a reading grape leaves that how do you know what you are going to need. If someone gets hurt and you don't have protection for it, well, you didn't have protection on the right side, well, then you didn't. If someone -- you have a double game blow out, you don't have enough of pitching, then you know you had a double game blow out. We try to use the roster -- maximize the roster that would help us win games the most, rather than prevent us from losing games any worse than maybe we were already losing them.

BOBBY VALENTINE: You would have to ask them that obviously. But they are a good team. They have played a lot of winning baseball, so I am sure they play right 'til the end of the game. I am sure a crowd, you know, much support as they get here, I am sure the crowd doesn't allow them to do anything but play 'til the last out.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Well, I don't necessarily believe in coincidence, but as far as a slide after that, people included those three games into the next grouping of games, so you started off losing three in a row and so when you win one out of the next two, you have lost four out of five and that is the way those things manifest themselves.

BOBBY VALENTINE: That credence stuff, the only thing that -- only thing that happens when you are talking about managing, under, outmanaging, is that the players perform. If you make eight different moves during a game and seven of them work out and the last one, it is either a pitching move, the pitcher gives up a home run; a pinchhitter strikes who out with the bases loaded, if a player doesn't do something, then you are foiled. So I don't take any credence in that. And as far as outmanaging Tony La Russa, I don't think that is going to happen. The Mets are going to have to outplay the St. Louis Cardinals or vice versa.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Again, redundancy is something I should bear with, but there is no substitution for experience unless it is talent and you know, Al has a real edge in the experience category. But Rick is an extremely talented player.