AL DIVISION SERIES: RANGERS v YANKEES

October 5, 1999

Johny Oates

JOHNNY OATES: Can't be that tough. We can by luck, just pure luck, do more offensive than we've done here lately. I don't care, Yankee Stadium, Yellowstone Park, it doesn't matter, we can score more runs in this by accident. Take nothing from El Duque, he threw well. But with our offense, our ballclub, to me it's mind boggling.

JOHNNY OATES: Well, he hit -- the second at-bat he hit the ball well. Bernie made a nice play on that. The other two at-bats off of El Duque, pitched him pretty much the same way he's always pitched him, and, you know, it's just wanting to lay off that side on a breaking ball. And Nelson's always given him trouble. Never had a whole lot of success against Nelson. That was his best tonight. I think El Duque tonight made a lot of people look uncomfortable, not only Juan but a lot of guys were uncomfortable up there tonight.

JOHNNY OATES: Well, really we only had a couple of chances. First inning, you got two of the first three guys on and of course Juan expanded the strike zone a little bit and struck out. You know, Rafael showed patience there. He worked it to 3-0, had the 3-0 swing, got a cutter he didn't feel comfortable swinging at. And he didn't throw -- I don't think he threw a ball to Zeile. A swing simulator. I don't think there was any impatience in the first inning. Maybe swinging at strike one and strike three out of the strike zone. But other than that, I thought all the guys showed great patience in the second inning, there wasn't much to it. Got a couple runners on it, base hit and a walk again, Bernie made a nice play in the second inning. I really don't think that impatience kept us from scoring early. He made some good pitches, and, again, other than Juan batting in the first inning, that was the only chance.

JOHNNY OATES: Our pitching did a great job tonight. As far as I'm concerned we gave two extra outs on the first one. We didn't turn a double play that has to be turned on Darryl. You have to catch the ground ball in this league. That's as far as I'm concerned, for unearned runs. One pitch, Bernie, 1-2; we made two real good pitches Bernie lays off of. Both could have been strikes. 3-2, ball over our head. They were just finishing -- that ball game could have easily been nothing-nothing if we caught the ground balls and made the pitches. I have no complaints with the way we threw the ball tonight.

JOHNNY OATES: I know it was key. Any time we talked so much about -- in today's game -- getting on the board first, especially playoff type series and giving our pitchers a chance and knowing the troubles that we've had scoring runs in playoffs against this club, that was key for us, to get guys on in the first inning, Pudge just missed hitting one out, Rusty works the walk. We got the guys coming up that had some success against El Duque. That was certainly -- the first inning was big for us, not being able to put at least a couple runs on the board.

JOHNNY OATES: I don't know if there was one turning point tonight. Certainly you would have to -- if you picked Bernie, somewhere along the way you could pick him tonight with the two-run double, the three-run home run, the catch, certainly he made a difference out there tonight. But I don't know if that -- certainly if Juan's ball falls in, it becomes different. But I don't know, tonight was one of those games. I don't know if there was one particular instant. If it was, from my standpoint it would have been the first inning when we didn't put any runs on the board.

JOHNNY OATES: I don't think he was pitching around one. I think in the first inning he knew who he wanted to pitch to. I've seen him do it before. I think he felt that even with Juan coming up behind Rusty with base open, he wasn't going to give Rusty anything to get that first run on the board. He walks Rusty and strikes Juan out. Again, we were letting Rafael hit 3 and 0. It wasn't a pitch he liked. He walked Rafael, then went after Zeile and struck him out. I think he knew who he wanted to pitch to in that first inning and when he had that first base he was going to use that for Rusty. That shows a lot of knowing how to pitch, that you walk the bases loaded to get to another hitter that you want to pitch to. A great deal of confidence in your own abilities.

JOHNNY OATES: Well, I tell you, nothing that we haven't already said. You know, we talk the talk a lot. It's now time to walk the walk. I said something like that before the ball game. We can talk about it all we want. Until we start getting some base hits, it's going to be tough for us to win. Like I said before, with the offense we throw out there, regardless of who's pitching, you're going to bump into a run once in a while by accident. We had our chances early tonight. And when those fizzled, it just seemed like we really never got anything going late in the ball game.