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AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: TIGERS v ATHLETICS

October 14, 2006

Ken Macha

DETROIT, MICHIGAN: Game Four

Q. Would you say that the reason for the lack of offense by your team is the quality or the style of pitching by the Tigers, or is it more on your own hitters?
KEN MACHA: You know what, offensively against the Twins, I thought we did very well. The Twins I think were second in the league in pitching, Tigers wound up first in the league. But I think their pitchers did a very good job.
One of the things they've done is really our impact guy, Frank, they've really limited him. And of course Swish hasn't hit any homeruns either. The sudden impact that we have in our lineup, they've limited that dramatically.
Frank basically was our catalyst the last six weeks of the season, and certainly was in the Minnesota series. You take that production out of your lineup, and it makes it tough.

Q. Are they doing anything different, or are they just doing what they're doing well? I guess maybe I didn't ask that right.
KEN MACHA: I don't think they're doing anything that's been unexpected, no.

Q. Have you talked to or do you want to try and talk to your friend Terry Francona to get any kind of good karma to find out how to come back from this deficit?
KEN MACHA: Actually, I had a missed call. He called immediately after the game last night. And I talked to Vuce (Vucinich) and said it's a basic thing. You've got to win one game today, and tomorrow we've got our ace pitching. If we get back to Oakland I like our chances of doing that. So we've got to win one game today.
Danny Haren has pitched a lot of good games at the end of losing streaks and he's turned it around for us, and he's a guy that pitched the clincher against the Twins. There's a lot of faith in him going on out there.

Q. During the postseason, Leyland has done some things that we don't see a lot of managers doing, including visit the mound during an at bat, remove a pitcher during an at bat. When you see him do those kinds of things, what's your impression?
KEN MACHA: I know Jim probably has some things that he feels very adamant about as far as going out there and letting those players know what he expects. I rarely do that. If I go out to the mound I'm taking a pitcher out. We had a game this year where I didn't make that trip. I remember my first year managing when we had Keith Foulke here.
Jerry Manuel, the manager of the White Sox at that time. In Spring Training I asked him -- because he didn't want Foulke anymore. I asked him what the problem was with Keith. He said, Well, he went to Yankee Stadium and had an outing there where he just basically fell apart, and then after that he lost his confidence.
Well, the first game that we played in Yankee Stadium that year, he came in and gave up a homerun and had a blown save. It was in the 9th inning. I ran out to the mound and I said, Look, Keith, get out of this inning. We're going to win this game. You can't give up now. Let's go, get out of this inning. And he wound up doing that, okay.
I believe Giambi hit the homerun off him that particular at-bat. This year we had the big game against the Angels, the Friday night game at our park, and Street came in, had a blown save. I told Street, Get out of this inning. We're going to come back and win this game. Don't give up any more runs.
We wound up winning in extra innings. When you get a strong feeling about something and you need to send a message to somebody out there, such as what Jimmy felt he had to do, it's had a positive impact on those guys. He's made some good trips.

Q. How much would you like to see Zito get another start tomorrow just because of what he's meant to your team? And these could be his final days as an A, basically?
KEN MACHA: Well, I'm sure Z -- we get this game tomorrow and Z is going to be really focused. He pitched opening day for us, and the Yankees just absolutely abused him. Then his next time out there against the Yankees he pitched very well. He's got a way of making adjustments and doing that.
Sure, I want Barry to have another chance. I feel good about Danny going out there and pitching today, and I feel good about our lineup today. It's a very likely possibility. Barry will go out there and turn the game around and pitch better, I'm sure.

Q. It seems like the Tigers' pitching staff has a lot of young arms that sort of came of age this year. Do you, in your time in baseball, ever remember seeing a staff where something odd like that happened?
KEN MACHA: You know what, I managed in the Minor Leagues in the Red Sox organization, and we played the Toronto organization. At that time -- and I think the one year they had three pitchers at three different times on their team in serious. They had Halladay, Escobar, and Carpenter. And these are their three studs that were going to come up and do it.
Happenings like this, it's something that you've got to really appreciate because there you have those three pitchers in the Toronto organization, and all of them had great careers. But all of them coming on at one time, it just doesn't happen a whole lot.

Q. Do you think it happens for a reason?
KEN MACHA: Does it happen for a reason?

Q. All at once.
KEN MACHA: I don't know. That's hard to say. All I could do was follow the development of those three guys I just mentioned. At that particular time, we had Rick Peterson here. He did a tremendous job with developing those pitchers and giving them confidence and having them go out there and pitch with confidence. Things like that just don't happen. Yeah, there's reasons behind it. Jim and Chuck Hernandez certainly probably played a role in that, also.

Q. Did you make any lineup changes? And if so, can you just describe what went into them?
KEN MACHA: The only thing that we do is have Chávez hitting behind Frank. We flip-flopped those two guys. That's the only -- at this particular point, there's not a whole lot of options or different lineups or shuffling the deck or whatever. That particular lineup won three games for us against the Twins.

End of FastScripts...

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