MLB WORLD SERIES: INDIANS v MARLINS

October 21, 1997

Mike Hargrove

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, yes. (Laughter.) The same thing you see, without giving away a whole lot, yeah, we've seen it and thought about it. And there are certain people that we have in our line-up that can take advantage of that or try to take advantage of that. There are other people we don't want to take advantage of that. So, yes, we're aware of it.

MIKE HARGROVE: I've been around a lot of players in the Big Leagues and in my years as a player, coach and manager, and I probably have run across very, very few of them that understand hitting as well as or as much as Kevin Seitzer does. He's very knowledgeable about what makes him a good hitter and very knowledgeable about what makes other people good hitters. And if you know Kevin at all you know he's not afraid to talk about it. (Laughter.) I like listening to people that know what they're talking about, and I like to get in discussions with Kevin about stuff like that. Kevin has helped in that regard a lot. And that's not to take away anything from Charlie Manuel, our hitting instructor. But he's a big help there. And Kevin talks the game constantly, you need your veterans -- I've yet to see a good baseball team that didn't have veteran leadership, and Kevin is one of those guys. He constantly talks the game. And polices things that need to be policed -- him and a few other veterans. So he's part of that mix. Kevin is one of the good guys.

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, Jaret is a kid who is obviously a high-profile kid that came out of California that was our number one pick, started this year off in AA. The plans were, by the end of the year, was to have him in Triple-A and call him up in September. With McDowell and Ogea and even Hershiser going on the disabled list, we had to rush Jaret. We moved him from Double-A to Triple-A, he had three or four starts in Triple-A, and did very well, and we moved him to the Big Leagues. And overall -- he's had a couple of tough starts, but on the whole he's been very, very good for us. And it's nice to see young kids that can be -- that their talent level and their maturity level will allow them to be pushed, and Jaret is one of those guys. He really has been a godsend for us this year, because he kept things going the right direction until our other people could get healthy.

MIKE HARGROVE: I don't know that, it depends on the quality of the lefties. Leiter and Saunders aren't too bad, and so the last time we faced Leiter we didn't get many hits off him. So we've got our work cut out for us, we do have a different team and we have been this year fairly successful with the left-handed pitching. We swung the bat well on the left-handed pitching. So I don't look at it as an advantage or disadvantage, it's something we have to face.

MIKE HARGROVE: He might. He had a chance to start tonight, too, and I just decided to go with Thome, we'll look at it again tomorrow and see where we're at. But I'm not afraid to put Kevin in the line-up if that's what you mean.

MIKE HARGROVE: Jeff Branson, Jeff Manto, Seitzer can play first base. We've got guys there.

MIKE HARGROVE: His physical condition is fine, it really is. That was just one of the deciding factors in starting Ogea in Game 2 and Jaret in Game 4, with the idea that whoever started Game 2 would have another start in the series. And the guy that starts in Game 4, that's going to be the start he's got and that's it. Jaret has not ever pitched this deep into a season, had this many innings. I think he's around 210, 215, somewhere around in there. He's never accumulated that many innings in a year on his arm. And we gave him an extra day before his last start, an extra day's rest, and Jaret came out and didn't have what was on his pitches before. And it made us think that we needed to be careful with his physical well-being, number one, but also with his ability to be able to go much longer in this -- during this season and get people out effectively. So we decided to go with Ogea in Game 2 to get two starts and think that Jaret in one start will be very well for us. I'm looking for a good start out of Jaret tomorrow.

MIKE HARGROVE: It was very difficult for any team to be successful unless they're strong up the middle and usually all eyes fall on the shortstop, being the number one guy that needs to be strong, and Omar certainly fills that bill for us. I don't want to say he's a magician with his glove, but he's got maybe the softest hands I've ever seen. The ball goes into his glove and you very rarely see it come bouncing out. He gets in good position to make plays and keeps his hand soft. And he's just -- he's a very good athlete. He's a big part of this ball club.

MIKE HARGROVE: There are certain things you don't have to talk about. You don't really need to talk about, and that's one of them. These guys understand what's going on with the weather, the dampness or whatever. And they've played in these conditions before, just as the Marlins have. There's certain things there's no need to talk about, and that's probably something we won't discuss.

MIKE HARGROVE: This has been a year for Eric that's been inconsistent for him. He has that bone spur in his heel that early in the season was bothering him a lot. Since then it has settled down, we've been able to treat it medically, to get it not to be a factor, and we've seen his consistency improve along with the health of his foot. Eric is -- I think there are people that throughout the postseason and really late in the season I kept reading and hearing where I was afraid to use Eric Plunk and I didn't have confidence in him, and that's not true, I do. But I think there are certain situations that Eric has a chance to be very successful in. I think there are certain situations he has less of a chance to be successful in it, it's any manager's job to put his players in the best possible situations he can. And so Eric will be used mid-to-late in the ballgame, and to get people out as long as his stuff matches with the people that he has to face.

MIKE HARGROVE: The beginning of the season we had guys that had been every day Big-League players for a while, and still considered themselves that, and to really kind of head off any problems we would have had to move those guys, gave them a chance, such as Chad Curtis, gave them a chance to go some place else and play every day, it worked out well for Chad. And since we brought in Branson and people like that, Manto, that know their jobs, they know their role and keep themselves ready for those jobs and those roles. And that is a very important thing for that player, that is a bench player to understand and step his job and responsibility. It can be a real problem on the team if you get people on the bench that are not willing to accept the role that you have for them. And it wasn't a problem with Curtis and those guys, don't get me wrong, it was not a problem. John Hart and I just did not want it to become a problem, so.

MIKE HARGROVE: It hurts. It's just not a lot of fun. Hitting it off the end of the bat is probably worse than hitting the ball down by your hands. But it's very painful and it stays painful for a while. And it's the kind of hurt that when it stops hurting it feels so good that it stopped, it was worth getting hurt in the first place (laughter.)