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NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: CARDINALS v METS

October 14, 2006

Willie Randolph

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: Game Three

Q. What's the status of Steve Trachsel, what happened and what did he tell you?
WILLIE RANDOLPH: He's icing down his thigh. He got hit on the thigh muscle. He had a little swelling and we'll keep it iced overnight and see how he feels tomorrow. He seems okay.

Q. We talked about this with you a little before the game, but do you feel now that the team has reached a critical mass with what seems like up to the 7th inning yesterday, everything was rolling in your direction, and now you've been outscored 10-0 and you've had five hits since the 7th inning yesterday, what's been going on in your opinion? And I guess it's a two-part question.
WILLIE RANDOLPH: Well, tonight Suppan pitched well, pitched real well. We'll turn the page and be ready to play tomorrow.
Put the ball in play and they made some great defensive plays behind him. Every time they seemed to get a little something going, they made some nice plays behind him. I don't think there's any real correlation or carryover from last night to tonight. The team goes out and plays hard every day and tonight. Suppan pitched real well, but we'll be ready to play again tomorrow. We always are.

Q. How big was Oliver's performance?
WILLIE RANDOLPH: He was outstanding. Gave us a chance to have everybody fresh, our main guys for tomorrow, a superlative job coming in, giving a chance to get back in the game. We didn't do much to get back in, but, you know it was huge for him to be able to give us a little blow and have our main guys ready to go tomorrow. Bert was able to come in and help us out, also.

Q. The first two innings there, do you look at one of those walks being a turning point, the Suppan homer, what stands out to you about the first two innings?
WILLIE RANDOLPH: Nothing in particular. They came out, the crowd was loud, and they fed off the energy I thought. They just came out of the chute and got on the board real quick, first two innings when they did most of the damage obviously. They came out and took it to us early.
Obviously Trachsel was struggling a little bit early, put some men on base early, walked three or four, five guys and that's really what helped set everything up. Walking a good-hitting ballclub like that is not going to help you and they took advantage of it.

Q. Just following it up, you guys have had a double-digit lead in your division since the end of June. Do you consider this being down 2-1 to be the first time that you're under pressure this year to respond?
WILLIE RANDOLPH: No. We've been in tougher spots than this. We feel like we're in pretty good shape, even though we're down 2-1. Things could change real, real quick, so we'll get some rest tonight and guarantee you we'll be ready to play tomorrow.

Q. Well, you say that, but what tougher spot could you have been in this year but this?
WILLIE RANDOLPH: Well, it depends how you look at it. We're down 2-1 and obviously we go out and win the next few games, we'll be back in it and we win three, we'll go to the World Series. You know, that's the way I'm looking at it.
We don't try to overanalyze or be too dramatic about anything that goes on. We've been a good team all year, and that's the way we play. If you look at it that way, then you kind of feel pressure to go out and do your job. We played loose and easy all year long, we're not going to change that now. We know who we are, no one has to tell us about it. Tomorrow, we win that, we tie it up, we win another one after that, we move on. That's the way we look at it and we feel good.

Q. How did you feel when Trachsel came out of the game?
WILLIE RANDOLPH: Well, my first thoughts was that, you know, we need to get a nice, long relief appearance out of Oliver. We didn't want to go into a situation where we had to use any of our main guys and tax our bullpen. Obviously my first thought was to make sure that it wasn't the knee area. I didn't know for sure if it would swell up too much on him but actually it looks decent when I saw him just now.
You know, your first thought is just that you have to get deep in your bullpen, and like I said, Oliver and Bert did a great job of really bailing us out and giving us a chance to come out full strength tomorrow.
We feel real good about -- hey, you've got to give it up sometimes and tonight was a night we did. But the damage as far as the overall team was minimal as far as I'm concerned. We need to get a win tomorrow and come out and even things up.

End of FastScripts...

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