NL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS v BRAVES

October 6, 1999

Larry Dierker

LARRY DIERKER: No.

LARRY DIERKER: No, I never have that thought. I felt a little more relaxed personally this year than in the last two playoffs. I think there is some advantage to being the underdog. It takes a little pressure off. Last year with San Diego, you know, they had the worst record amongst division winners. And we went over 100 games and we had Randy Johnson on the mound and we had the home field. I didn't feel the pressure that we were supposed to win. This year, I think is more like the first year when we came in here with an 84-win championship and tried to play the Braves. We were the underdogs, and we didn't play all that well in that series, but then it was the first postseason opportunity for most of our players. This year, I think we have the psychological advantage of being able to relax knowing that a lot of our players have been hurt throughout the year and nobody has expected us to do this well, and probably very few people expected at the outset that we could win this series. So maybe for that reason, I felt relaxed. I haven't felt pressure. I think when we play aggressively and fail, my only hope is that we will continue to play aggressively. What I found is that when a team gets in a slump, a team starts getting too conservative and guys worry about getting thrown out or they worry about having a bad swing or making a bad pitch. And that's the nature, I guess of the beast, whether it's baseball or anything else, when we get in a slump, we start to think too much, and get too conservative. So I was happy that we continued to play aggressively even after some of our aggressive attempts didn't work in the early part of the game, and I expect that we'll continue to play that way. However, I know there have been times during the season when we haven't. There were times when we're trying to encourage guys to steal and they won't go. It's frustrating at times, but that's the psychology of it. I talked about that a lot when I was announcing. When you get in a slump, everybody starts trying to be too careful. You'd like them not to, but they are only doing what they think is right and what they feel is going to be successful for them.

LARRY DIERKER: I don't know what's going to happen with those two guys. The key to them hitting well is for the pitcher to throw them a pitch that they can hit well. For Biggio, of course, also with a pitcher, a guy that he can get a read on and steal a base against. Defensively, they are excellent. They both work the count well and get on base with walks, and they have both been the types of players over the year that can help you win even when they are not hitting and they are just like any other hitters. They go through times when they are hitting real well and times when they have trouble getting the hits. I think that the probability is that if they play in enough playoffs that they are going to have a great series, and one of them will be an MVP of a series at some point, just the laws of probability. They will get into a series where a guy makes mistakes and they will be swinging the bat well. I hope that it is this series. But one thing I think is appropriate to say here is that even the greatest hitters can't hit when the pitcher is pitching well. Barry Bonds hasn't done well in the postseason; and for me over the last decade, he's been the best hitter in the league. So you can only do what the pitcher will allow you to do. I think as much as anything, there are problems in the postseason, and past years has been a tip-of-your-hat-to-the-pitcher type thing, more so than the fact that they were coming up and not hitting well.

LARRY DIERKER: For me, he's a lot like Nolan Ryan. He's not as tall, but he's not a small guy. He's short but he's not small. He's got big strong legs, just like Ryan had and he's got great snap? The wrist. You know, when you talk about throwing a ball, you've got this lever here where your shoulder moves your arm forward, and this one that moves the arm forward, and you have the last one, which is the wrist, (indicating), and I think and most hard throwers, the last part of that, the is most important. He can just stand here and flip the ball and shoot it across the room, hard, without even taking any kind of a wind-up. He's just got a tremendous, quick snap of the wrist, and that's what Ryan had, too. Neither one of those guys would draw their arm way back and come way over in what looked like -- maybe it looks more powerful. They both seem to do it rather effortlessly, and I think probably the common thing in those two guys is the strong legs and the snap of the wrist. Also to answer the first part of that question, his development has been steady. Each year he has gotten a little bit better. He's still having a little trouble working his breaking ball into the 9th inning, and it's understandable. It's certainly not his best pitch. When you're in a game situation in the 9th inning, you hate to get beat with another pitch, but there are some hitters that can hit the ball at 98 miles an hour, as the Mets proved last night, and there are times when he needs to have another pitch. This year, he's made some slight progress in that area, but he's made great process in locating his fastball. Strikeouts are up, even from what he did last year. His walks are way down from what he did last year, and he's not just throwing the ball down the middle, trying to throw it by everybody. He's putting his fastball in one corner and then the other, and he's made tremendous progress in that area. He's made progress with the breaking ball, but he's made tremendous progress in the ability to spot his fastball on the corners without walking batters.

LARRY DIERKER: I think so. The MVP and the Cy Young and all those votes have surprised me over the years from time to time. Generally speaking, guys that win those awards are on teams that win championships; and so it's not that their deeds are perhaps more important than similar deeds by other players on teams that don't win championships. I've always been skeptical about that. I felt that the best player should win whether he's on a winning team or not. I think that generally speaking, strikeout pitchers and home run hitters have a slight advantage over crafty pitchers and get-on-base-and-score-and-hit-for-average type of hitters. I think maybe he's at some slight disadvantage. For me, the number that to really counts is winning; and he's got the most wins, and even in his games where he's had no decision, we have generally won. And I think he's made 34 starts and won 29 of them. I don't care how many people you strike out. You know, that's pretty good ammunition to be against anybody with.

LARRY DIERKER: Hampton has become more like Glavine. He uses a variety of pitches; whereas, Glavine seems to use variations of the same pitch most of the time. But the way that he has become like Glavine is that he has begun to believe that if he never throws anybody a good strike to hit, that eventually he'll get out of the inning with no runs even if he walks a couple guys. I tried to explain to our hitters that Glavine and Maddux are two entirely different animals. They both like to pitch to the outside corner but Glavine would rather walk you than give you a good pitch to hit and Maddux would rather give you a good pitch to hit than walk you. So Maddux walks with 20, 30, 40 guys a year and Glavine 80 or 100 guys a year. Hampton has become more like Glavine. Just become very stingy in terms of trying to throw anything over the middle of the plate and as a result, he walks more batters than I would like him to walk. But with his ability to get the ground ball, quite often, he's been able to get the double play to erase the walk, and because of his style of pitching, he doesn't give up many extra-base hits. So if you get balls you can afford to walk people, the only hits you're giving up you are singles, and that's basically been his style, which I think is almost the same exact style as Glavine. The only difference is that Mike throws his slider, change-up more than Glavine. Glavine throws most of the same speeds to the same corner and Mike will use both corners.

LARRY DIERKER: I'm not sure what the answer to that question is. I'm not sure at what point they decided he would be a relief pitcher, but for me, he was a relief pitcher from the first time I saw him in spring training as an announcer. He always struggled to get his offspeed and breaking balls over the plate. And throwing as hard as he does, if you're just throwing all fastballs, after four or five innings, you start to slow down a little bit and they start hitting you. But for one inning, you know, it's almost unbeatable if you're throwing 98 miles an hour. It allows him to air it out and not worry about mixing up his speeds and locations as much. I think it was the logical thing to do. In fact, I was talking to Nolan Ryan day before yesterday when we had the celebration for the last regular season game in the Dome, and I asked him if he thought that if the game of baseball if he came up is like it is now, if he would have been made a closer instead of a starter. And he smiled. He didn't really answer that question that I recall. But my opinion is that if he had come up in today's game, with as much trouble as he had getting his curveball over early in his career, that he would have been made a closer instead of a starter.

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