NL DIVISION SERIES: CARDINALS v DIAMONDBACKS

October 1, 2002

Bob Brenly

BOB BRENLY: It appeared to me that mechanically he was rushing a little bit. When he does that, his velocity drops down. His slider is not quite as sharp as it usually is. They were a very unforgiving team to him tonight. He made some mistakes. They hit him hard.

BOB BRENLY: I'd have to look at the charts. I don't recall right off the top of my head.

BOB BRENLY: Well, you saw it. When you get beat 12-2, it's hard to complain about the umpires.

BOB BRENLY: Certainly the game of baseball is one of ebb and flow, momentum going back and forth from dugout to dugout. Who knows what would have happened after that. But that's about all I'm going to say about that.

BOB BRENLY: I would guess it probably has to do with the opponent that he faces in the Division Series more so than just the Division Series itself. It's a good ballclub over there. They had a real good game plan against him. Stayed up the middle of the field for the most part. When they got runners on base, they were able to move them around. When they got them to second or third, all their hitters were concentrating on staying up the middle of the field, which is a great approach against Randy Johnson.

BOB BRENLY: Hit pitched a good game. Hit some good balls off him. Had him on the ropes it appeared in the early going. But, like you said, from about the third inning on, he seemed to rediscover his curve ball, started throwing that for strikes when he wanted to. Even a couple of innings after that he started to mix in some straight change-ups. Like his pitches came to him in waves almost. I thought we hit him pretty good early, but, you know, he's a battler. He's going to do everything he can to keep his team in the ballgame. He was able to do that tonight.

BOB BRENLY: I didn't sense any drop in intensity on our players. You know, there's another guy out there that's trying to do his job, too. Unfortunately for us and fortunately for them, he was able to do his job better than we were tonight. I mean, he made good pitches around the edges of the zone, too close to take. But not really good enough to get a good piece of and hit the ball hard. Like I said, we hit some balls hard early. But he just seemed to get better and better as the game went on.

BOB BRENLY: From my vantage point, looked like he had to freeze momentarily because it was a line drive. He froze for just a second to make sure the ball got through the infield. As always, in the regular season, post-season, makes no difference, we encourage or guys to be aggressive, we encourage Eddie Rodriguez to be aggressive at third place. The outfielders they had at that time, Pujols was the guy we thought we could take chances on. He made a great throw, put it right on the money. Matheny did what he does best, blocked home plate, didn't give Junior any room to get in there.

BOB BRENLY: No games to one. I'm smart enough to figure that out.