MLB WORLD SERIES: YANKEES v DIAMONDBACKS

October 30, 2001

Bob Brenly

BOB BRENLY: I think it was the temperature more than anything else tonight. It was extremely cold at field level, especially on the pop-ups behind home plate there seemed to be a swirling wind behind the home plate and backstop. Really played tricks with those balls. It was cold, it was cold for both teams. We just didn't play particularly good defense tonight.

BOB BRENLY: Well, we got exactly what we expected from him. We knew we would not be rattled by the situation, we would not be rattled by the surroundings. He went out and pitched a tremendous ballgame and gave us a couple more innings than we thought we were going to get out of him. The cool temperature allowed him to pitch deeper in the ballgame than we anticipated but you have to put runs on the board to win the game and we were not able to support our pitching tonight. Curt Schilling is going to start tomorrow because he's the right guy to pitch tomorrow.

BOB BRENLY: Absolutely. Like I said all along, if we were up 3-0, Batista would still take the baseball but for a lot of different reasons including the low pitch count in Schilling's last start, the conditions out there very much favor pitchers right now, and we had Miguel Batista up a couple of times warming up in the bullpen. Schilling will pitch tomorrow and Miguel will be the Game 5 starter.

BOB BRENLY: I thought we had some good swings against him and some not so good swings. I mean, he comes exactly as advertised, no secrets, there's no tricks and you know what he's going to throw you. He's going to throw that cutter back to the left or run it in on their hands, he's either going to throw it on the right or the outside corner occasionally, he will elevate it in the strike zone to try to get ahead in the count, to get some swinging strikes, but we knew that going in. He's just one of the best in the business. Even though you know he's coming, he's still extremely tough to hit.

BOB BRENLY: Not really. I mean Game 7 is a long ways away. Right now we are just concerned with Game 4 and as I said because of the pitch count in his last outing and his insistence that he's ready to take the ball, I think he'll be fine.

BOB BRENLY: I have and he's ready to take the ball. I mean, he didn't do cartwheels or anything like that and he didn't look at me like I was crazy. He knew that there was a possibility that he would pitch in Game 4 and he's prepared for it. He said all along, he's preparing to pitch Game 4 whether I allowed him to or not. So it's a good thing that mentally he's ready to pitch tomorrow.

BOB BRENLY: Their starting pitcher was outstanding tonight. He was effectively wild. He missed the strike zone a few times, but basically, he came as advertised as well. A lot of good fastballs up high in the zone, a lot of split finger fastballs dipped down low out of the zone. He threw enough sliders to give us something else to think about, but he was extremely tough.