NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: PADRES v BRAVES

October 8, 1998

Bobby Cox

BOBBY COX: I think simply because the teams that are in postseason, they have the dominating pitching in the League. And you're running up against an outstanding starter every single night. And if you look back through the course of the season, against your guys, Pedro Martinez and Brown, they don't give up much, the Madduxes, the Smoltzes, they don't give up runs even during the regular season. It doesn't change much in the postseason. It's the same outstanding pitching that they're seeing. And a guy like Ashby, I think I had him rated in the Top 7 or so in the National League before the season started. I admired him that much. So the people that thought we were going to go out and knock him around were mistaken. We weren't going to hit him all that hard. If you get three or four runs, you've done a great night's work with a guy like that. And runs are just hard to come by with outstanding pitching. And I think Houston, they can run Randy Johnson at you, they come back with Shane Reynolds, and if you saw Reynolds pitch against the Cubs the first four or five innings down the stretch, he had like nine strikeouts in four innings, and that guy can throw a shutout with anybody. And then Hampton and Lima threw good, too. It seems to me all the teams in postseason have outstanding pitching.

BOBBY COX: He had a shutout against a good hitting Chicago Cub team a few days ago, through the 8th inning, and he didn't struggle all that much. For Greg Maddux, yes, people would think he had struggled. But if you watched the ballgames and saw the hits, he got the ball up a few times and they hit it. But a lot of the hits weren't -- when you're a groundball pitcher, some are going to get through. And it happened a few games in a row to him. He's on top of his game right now. I would expect him to throw a great ballgame.

BOBBY COX: Yeah. I think he threw nine pitches the first inning. But the second inning he threw a lot more. But he should be ready.

BOBBY COX: They're so hard to beat. If you're in the 9th inning, Hoffman is there, they haven't blown any in 9-0 games or whatever it is. They don't blow ballgames. And we had a gap, I was thinking maybe Danny could score. And the one thing that messed us up a little bit was I wanted to keep Ligtenberg in the ballgame. He only threw eight or nine pitches in the first inning. He pitched great, and I couldn't make a double switch, and get Neagle in there and switch Perez into the spot. I thought we could hold him one more inning.

BOBBY COX: Well, you know, when a game is that tight and you go extra innings, you've got to throw all your bullets out there, especially with their bullpen. And when you have a chance to win, you've got to hammer the nail, if you can. If you wait around, there's not going to be a second shot. Probably, if you play the percentages.

BOBBY COX: Oh, yeah. They were good last year. They had a lot of injuries last year, and the only reason they were down last year is because the amount of injuries that they did have. But any team that gets Brown along with guys like Ashby, and even Hamilton and Hitchcock, you're talking pretty good pitching there. So that's a real solid first four. They were the team to beat by all -- the speculation around baseball prior to Randy Johnson going to Houston was that San Diego would be the team to beat. And I could see why. They had a potent line-up and they had that great pitching. Then it switched; as soon as Randy went to Houston, they said Houston would dominate and go to the playoffs and the series.

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