NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BRAVES v DIAMONDBACKS

October 17, 2001

Bob Brenly

BOB BRENLY: I started feeling better there for a while. But the last few innings of that ball game I think I had a relapse.

BOB BRENLY: It's a possibility. I mean, our guys down there are obviously not power-pitchers. They rely on movement and location. Certainly the location wasn't there tonight.

BOB BRENLY: He was fantastic. He did what he had to do. Once again, to give us a chance to win that ball game. I really think the only problem -- I mean you could look at the two home runs, but really the walk ahead of the Javy Lopez home run with two outs is what gave Lopez a chance to come up there. You really have to give him a lot of credit. I just heard him in an interview saying he was looking for a pitch over the plate, trying to drive it to rightfield. He got a pitch at the knees. Not many guys hit that pitch out of the ballpark but you got to give him credit for that.

BOB BRENLY: Our starters every time they take the mound think they should shut out the opposition. I don't think they feel any pressure. I think they understand at this time of season you run up against good pitching. Runs are going to be hard to come by. I don't think they feel any added pressure. Every time they take the ball, they expect to go out there and shut the other team down.

BOB BRENLY: You mean our guys throwing bad pitches? A couple instances, yeah, they were bad pitches. Like I said, the one Lopez hit out to rightfield was a real good pitch. Some of the other ones maybe were bad pitches. I think Greg Swindell was trying to throw a changeup in the dirt to B.J. Surhoff and left it up over the plate and he flipped it to rightfield. Once again, this time of year for our offense we're facing a pretty good pitching staff over there and we pitched a pretty good pitching staff in St. Louis. Tom Glavine was every bit as spectacular in his own right as Randy Johnson was if you ask me. He pitched right into the strength of his defense. We hit a lot of balls on the button but right at their defenders. He knew where the guys were positioned behind him and he forced hitters to hit the balls to his defense. That's pretty crafty.

BOB BRENLY: Well, I mean everybody would like to have a Karsay and a John Smoltz guy come in throwing 98, 99 miles an hour but there's not a lot of guys out there. The injury to Bret Prinz took away the power we have in the bullpen and we have what we have. We have guys that are crafty, they rely on movement and location. When they're hitting their spots, they usually get a lot of ground balls. They don't see a lot of strikeouts from our relievers but usually they get the ground balls they're looking for and can avoid trouble that way. When they miss their spots, the ball gets whacked.

BOB BRENLY: We just have to take that on a case-by-case situation depending on who the hitter is, who the pitcher is, depends on pitch counts. I mean, there's a lot of variables there. I can't just throw a blanket over the whole thing and say, "Yeah, we're going to let our starters go deeper." Depending on the situation, we may do that.

BOB BRENLY: No. Not at this point. I mean, we knew coming in to this series that they have a great pitching staff. It's going to be hard to score runs and we knew we weren't going to sweep them. I think they knew they weren't going to sweep us. It's going to be a battle. I fully expect this one to go the distance. But for right now, we have no plans to change our approach.