NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: PADRES v BRAVES

October 14, 1998

Dave Stewart

DAVE STEWART: Can't give you a perspective of a player. I can give you a perspective of a pitcher. If I'm pitching this ballgame today, my frame of mind is basically just try to keep things simple. Go at it, one hitter at a time, one pitch at a time. And just hope that I'm out there long enough to give my team a chance to score a run before they do. That's what the frame of mind of the pitching should be. As a player, obviously I couldn't tell you what Tony Gwynn is thinking or Greg Vaughn. I only know the pitching part of the game.

DAVE STEWART: I'm having fun, to be honest. From this side, it's a lot easier to have fun than it was as a player. As a player it was stressful. There are a lot of things that go through your mind, a lot of things that you're thinking about. From a coaching point, you can sit back and appreciate the intensity of both sides. You can appreciate the ups and the downs, the good moments and the bad moments of what's going on in this series. And as I said before, this is one of the better League Championship Series I've ever seen or been involved in.

DAVE STEWART: Well, by being around baseball for as long as I have, I fully understand that anything can happen in this game. The best have faced what Kevin Brown faced in his ballgame; and the worst, they face it all the time. So it's a beautiful game, baseball, because the underdog always has a chance.

DAVE STEWART: Coax me? I'm not really sure, you know, we were on our way to Mexico to visit with a team that we were trying to get an affiliation with, Yucatan, and the subject came up about possibly coaching a team. And Kevin is very convincing when he talks to you. And he told me that I was the guy to do this job. I was the guy to make a difference. He said all the right things. The important thing for me was to remain in some capacity in the office. And I think the clincher for me was by him allowing me to be in the office three or four times a week, still keeping my assistant's title, telling me I'm still going to be a part of the general manager's meetings and all of the things important to me and keeping the same duties that I had in the office. And for me, that was the clincher, not just becoming a pitching coach, but still being able to stay in the office, too.

DAVE STEWART: Well, a couple of years ago I signed Carlos Hernandez. This year we had Carlos Reyes earlier this year. We talked about Greg Myers. I can't even think of some of the smaller deals that we did, that I was a part of. And this winter we got a lot of work to do with Mexico and the Dominican Republic, which are my primary responsibilities. We'll get together with the Dominican Republic with the hurricane. There's been trouble there that we have to straighten out, and get to signing players again.

DAVE STEWART: I didn't think his control was bad, at all. When I looked at the at-bats and some of the pitches that were thrown, 0-2 especially was very, very close to his area; pitches that could have gone either way. I took my cap off to the Atlanta Brave club for focusing on making Kevin stay in an area. They had very, very good at-bats against him. And they created a positive situation for themselves. But Kevin, I didn't think his control was off at all.

DAVE STEWART: They had a lot of foul balls that created a 3-2 situation. He threw a lot of strikes, and they worked him well enough to bring the count from 0-2 to 3-2 in some cases. In most cases he was 0-2 and the count ended up 3-2, because they made him work at throwing pitches. When you do that, a lot of times you're going to put yourself in a situation where you can put the wood on the ball.

DAVE STEWART: Well, I think primarily because, one, we came into the series with nobody really giving us much of a chance to win. We jumped out 3-0. In most cases when a club is 3-0, you can probably finish it within three games. Obviously, we haven't done that, which now you look at the Atlanta Braves, and you have to respect the fact that they're a club that has not died. They're a club that's still trying, and they're giving it their best shot. It's a series that early was pretty much dominated by pitching, at least in the three games that we won. All three games were well-pitched ballgames by both sides. To the Atlanta Braves credit, late in the game they've been able to take advantage of our mistakes and open games you up. And they've put themselves back into it. It's been like watching Ping-Pong: One time this side is good, and then this side. It's been exciting, every aspect of the game. You're seeing a lot of managerial moves, you're seeing baseball like it's supposed to be played. A lot of people watch baseball and they think there's no strategy to the game. They think it's guys running around the bases and if you hit a ball and the play is close, you slide. But there's a lot of things involved in winning games and losing games, and I think you've seen every aspect of it now.

DAVE STEWART: Well, Gibson's was -- when he hit his, the wind was out of our sails. Tucker's, I don't know that there was that much impact, because that situation we're up three games to two. That brought them back to their second win. And we only need one win to finish this; whereas Gibson's, that was right off the bat. That home run decided the first game of the series. They beat, at that time, the best reliever in baseball and they beat also what was considered the best team in baseball at that time on the first game, with a club that was pretty badly beaten up. The Dodgers were a club that was basically -- they were playing on guts. So Tucker's home run is a heroic home run, but not the same impact as Gibson's.

DAVE STEWART: Well, I think, like I said, it's just basically -- on three days rest, you have a tendency to do a lot of things that you don't normally do on the fifth day. One, your stuff is not going to be as good. When I say "stuff", I mean velocity-wise, you're not going to be as good. A lot of guys have a tendency to try to overthrow, to try to gain the velocity. From my point of view, on three days rest, movement is better. And you want to try to take advantage of that, get the ball in your location and try to let the ball do what it's going to do. When you start trying to force the ball, you lose movement, plus you don't have as much velocity, and those are days when you're not going to have a well-pitched game. The best thing to do in a short rest start is to try to stay within yourself. Don't try to do too much.

DAVE STEWART: Well, I think Brown, that is the guy whose arm recovers best. He's got a very resilient arm. He's got one of the better arms I've seen in this game, as far as recovery time, as far as arm strength, as far as everything. He recovers very well.

DAVE STEWART: Gene Nelson, but he was a reliever. All of the guys I can think of, they are relievers, I've never seen a starter's arm recover as well as his does, and come back with the stuff he has. Gene Nelson, Carlos Reyes has a rubber arm, Duane Ward (ph) at one time, but like I said, they're all relievers.

DAVE STEWART: Always available in relief. Obviously, they never asked us to, but I was always knocking at the door, kind of like a vulture: "Hey, I'm ready." But he never used us -- in this case, Tony never used us, and in the Toronto series, Cito never used us.

DAVE STEWART: In the situation with Oakland, we either won it or we lost it. In two cases we lost it -- in one case we lost it, we were 4-0 Cincinnati, and the Dodgers beat us. And we ran away with San Francisco; none of those were close. And the Toronto, we went 6 games, but that pretty much, we were -- whatever we were. And what the Dodgers -- with the Dodgers, I was in relief.

DAVE STEWART: His last outing was 41 pitches, which is -- I can only go by his work habits since he's been here, that's not a lot of pitches for Kevin. So to me, that's real similar to bullpen work. Now, this is a guy that works two days in between starts, and he throws about half an hour to 40 minutes in between starts. I'd say all out, two days ago in a row. So I believe his bullpen works two days are much, much tougher than a 40-pitch outing in a game. So I don't really count that outing as anything more than bullpen work. So when you say he's going to be working, it was too quick for me. But whatever you said, I think that if anything, he's getting an extra day's rest, and he'll be pitching on the 6th day, is the way I'm looking at it.

DAVE STEWART: Had not picked up a ball, no. Other than playing catch in the outfield, he hadn't picked up a ball. His first time throwing off the mound was in that game.

DAVE STEWART: Well, when Leo does that with his guys, I don't think that they have two hard days, though. I think one is a get-loose day and one is a workday, but not a real strenuous work. I have never seen anybody throw two all out days in the bullpen in between starts, like Kevin does. For me it's like throwing -- you start your game, then you have your bullpen day. To me it's a hard bullpen, that's like a game to me, like two days of actual games to me. And I've never seen anybody do that.

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