NL DIVISION SERIES: CARDINALS v DIAMONDBACKS

October 12, 2001

Bob Brenly

BOB BRENLY: He has been doing miraculous things for us all season. We had him in that two spot tonight. If you were here before the ball game, I said he handles left-handers well and he proved it tonight. He's come up with a lot of big hits for us, defensive plays, but probably none other than that one tonight.

BOB BRENLY: That's not my decision to make. Whoever they choose to put out there on the mound, we'll do our best to score runs against him, it's not really my place to make a comment on that.

BOB BRENLY: Miguel, as he done pretty much all season long, he gave us what we needed tonight. We don't expect him to go out there and throw nine innings. We don't expect him to shut the other team out completely, but we do expect him to keep us in the ball game. After the Edmonds home run he settled in nicely, made some great pitches in tough situations. And I didn't see him rattled or lose his poise out there one time during that ball game tonight.

BOB BRENLY: It's not only tonight, but the entire season. We have a lot of good ball players, we have confidence in all of them. Certainly it's a lot easier to run a set lineup out there on a day-to-day basis, but because we have versatile players that have confidence in themselves, it allows me to have confidence in them. Because they've all come through in such a big way every time we put them in there, it makes it easy to mix and match with our lineup.

BOB BRENLY: No more worried than any other time I send him out there. He seemed to be struggling with his upshoot. It's a pitch -- with that underarm delivery that he gets to break up and away. A lot of swinging strikes on that pitch. But he couldn't get in the strike zone tonight. After a couple of attempts, he went to his sinker and slider and threw strikes with those pitches.

BOB BRENLY: Absolutely.

BOB BRENLY: Albie Lopez will start the ball game tomorrow.

BOB BRENLY: Well, we did have Greg Swindell warmed up in the bullpen, and he has good numbers against Drew and very limited at-bats, but Morgan had an unbelievable sinker tonight. That's a good thing, if we happen to walk him. We'll go to BK and go for the strikeout against Pujols. I know that put the tying run on base, I just felt at that particular juncture of the game I felt that was the best way to go.

BOB BRENLY: Well, when you don't score runs and you don't get a lot of hits, it's easy to say the offense is not clicking, but I choose to give the credit to the Cardinals staff. They made mistakes in locations where we could get the bats on the ball, and our guys were patient to get those pitches and do something with them tonight. It was certainly nice to see the long ball to Gonzalez again, and Counsell coming up with the big home run. There were a lot of good base hits in that ball game.