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AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: RED SOX v RAYSOctober 16, 2008Joe MaddonBOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: Game Five Q. Did you get to Cambridge and Harvard yesterday at all? JOE MADDON: I did. I did. Last night had upstairs on the square a little dinner. Is it Tommy Doyle's across there? There's a little bar. It's right across. I thought it said Tommy Doyle's, kind of a cool little place upstairs, had a little Harvard karaoke going, very entertaining, then watched a little bit of the game when I got back. Very nice night. Q. Did you favor the crowd with a song? JOE MADDON: No, not at all. Bobby was sick, so he wasn't there, and we tried to get Coach Cursi up there, but he was a couple beers away so it didn't happen. Q. You said on the days that James Shields is pitching you avoid him. What about Scotty Kazmir? JOE MADDON: Kaz is more approachable the day he pitches. He's got a different kind of way about him. Before I saw him today I told everybody he looked pretty good, and I'll visit with him a little bit later. Everybody is different. All these starting pitchers have their different way about them, and Kaz is not like Shields in that sense. Q. Can you bear with me? I'm from Philadelphia, so I have a couple Philadelphia questions. First of all, your impressions on the Phillies making the World Series, and growing up in Hazelton, were you a Phillies fan? JOE MADDON: I was not a Phillies fan. Actually I used to listen to Bice some on the radio and Richie Ashburn and all those guys, but Gene Mauch got to me. He is one of my favorite baseball people of all time. But I grew up a Cardinal fan. And I went down to see the Cardinals play the Phillies on several occasions, got a bunch of autographs. I actually have Tito Francona's autographs in the Cardinal yearbook, from the '64 Cardinals, I believe. So yeah, the Phillies have had a wonderful year. Just seeing them in spring training, my impression of them was that they were more like an American League lineup. I thought their offense, they could pound the ball up and down the lineup. I was really impressed with that. I've always been a big fan of their MVP guys, but I liked Victorino also. He made a big impression on me in spring training, Victorino. The thing I didn't know about them is how good their pitching was. You look at their bullpen, and of course, Lidge doing what he's done this year has been spectacular. But they're very solid all throughout. They're a good ballclub. Again, now that we're in Florida I get to see them in spring training, and I'm basically going off that. Q. I realize yesterday you went through chapter and verse on all the logic of Shields, Kazmir, and everything makes perfect sense except for the fact that I'm just wondering today, everybody is saying that you've given them an opening, this could be a critical mistake and everything else. I'm just wondering, are you amused by all of this, or are you surprised by all of this or do you just chalk it up to the media needing something to write yesterday? JOE MADDON: All of the above. You look at Scott Kazmir, he's a two-time All-Star. He's the best pitcher in the history of this organization. If you told the people in Boston last year that Kaz was going to pitch against them, they cringed, and all of a sudden he's not that good. We had talked about this prior to the series ever beginning, if the circumstances presented themselves in a certain manner, and they have. So I do find it a bit amusing. Like I said, you're talking about a very good pitcher right now, not just anybody. And he's pitched well in this ballpark in the past. I know, listen, more recently, he has not been on top of his game, absolutely. And a big part of that to me, the difference being that he's given up more home runs. He's always been a high pitch-count guy, always. I know this has followed him all the way through. Sometimes it's a command issue, sometimes it's also a foul ball issue for me. He gives up a lot of foul balls on two strikes. And furthermore, he's a strike-out guy. So all these factors are present. He's been this guy for the last couple years. And we thought about it, we thought it was the right thing to do right now. It was not a spur-of-the-moment thing, like most of the things we do. We've thought about it a bit, and quite frankly, I kind of like Kaz tonight. I know he's well rested, I know he's up for the moment, and I think he's going to pitch well. Q. In his other stops did you ever have any major positive impression about Carlos Peña? JOE MADDON: Yeah, actually when he was with the Tigers we played against him, and I remember one series in Anaheim, he was hitting balls way up in that right field stands. There was something about him, I always liked his glove work, and then you'd see the swing, you'd see the occasional power. And when we got him in that off-season, acquired him, talked to him on the phone, and when I saw him right away in spring training, I talked to him about two thins. I said, one, you expand your strike zone, and number two, you hit too many ground balls to second or first base. That's what gets you in trouble. I'm a huge advocate of pitch selection and seeing pitches and all that kind of stuff, so it was very easy for me to interact with him in that regard, and I would constantly bring that to his attention because obviously he strikes out a lot, but he strikes out or doesn't hit well when he's chasing pitches out of his hitting zone. So we really tried to get that in order. Furthermore, if you watch his batting practice, last year -- I haven't followed as much this year, but last year, I think they told me he hit only like five home runs during batting practice, which I really love. Although he doesn't hit a lot of balls to left field, he would just work on that, meaning letting the ball get keeper, not letting things roll, etc. So a lot of that last year led to the success we've had this year. Now, this year earlier on when he was struggling, expanded strike zone, pulling off balls, too many ground balls, et cetera. So finally the last six weeks or so, I think he's gotten back into his normal game plan. It's something I noticed in the past. We talked about it, and now that we're together, along with "Hendi", et cetera, I can remind him, whenever I see him getting away from it, the first thing I talk to him about is pitch selection, not about where his hands are, his feet are, et cetera. Get your strike zone back in order, you'll be fine. Q. Where has Dave Martinez made his biggest impact on your coaching staff? JOE MADDON: David? He's got an attitude. He's got an edge about him that I love. He's a winner. I know that all the players have the utmost respect for him. He's brought an edge to us in all the best ways. He played with a little bit of a chip. He's not very tall, not very big, but he was a wonderful baseball players for many years. When I got the job, I talked to RV at the time and talked about bringing some of the other Rays back, Devil Rays, and I said, I want Davey Martinez, because playing against him he epitomized to me everything that's good in a baseball player. If there was one guy that I wanted to influence our players, it would be him. I had no idea at that time how good of a coach he was. I had no idea. So he comes out, we get to know each other. We tried to get him more involved, try to get him more involved. He's a big family man, he's always taking care of his kids, doing soccer things, whatever, so I couldn't get him to come out to the old ballpark, so we had to hire him as a coach. And when you get him there on a daily basis, he's very good with the base running, he's very good with the bunting. He's very good with the outfielders, and for me he's very good at game strategy. He's very complete. He's very complete, and he's very opinionated, and he doesn't back down. I really enjoy having him, and I know the players feel all of that themselves. Q. Are you guys doing anything new to David Ortiz to sort of prolong his postseason hitting problems, or is there another factor there you think? JOE MADDON: We're just lucky. I mean, listen, we're pitching as we think is the right way to go about it, but I don't take anything for granted. Listen, this is not just saying it; I have so much respect for him. You don't want to let your guard down. We might be a little bit fortunate right now, that's about it. No, there's not like this huge different schematic, we're not trying a whole bunch of new different things. I think we've been aggressive. I like the aggressiveness of our pitching to this point. I talk about fastball command every time I talk about our pitching, and I think we pretty much have that going on. But for right now, let's just play tonight's game, see what happens. But this guy, he can do anything on any given night, and I don't trust him in that regard because he's that good. Q. You saw a different Daisuke Matsuzaka in Game 1. He was very aggressive. What are you expecting to see out of him tonight? JOE MADDON: You know, what I learned the other day was that he has got better fastball command than I thought. You know, seeing him in the past, I always thought that he threw a lot of fastballs around the zone, and I didn't think it was intentional. I just thought that he had bad fastball command. But he had very good command of his other pitches. So what I saw the other day was that if he wants to have good fastball command, he can have that, too. Apparently, not knowing him well, he's a very bright man, he's a very bright pitcher, and I think he makes adjustments according to what's going on. Tonight, there's no telling. He's shown me that he's able to do a variety of different things, whereas in the past I thought it was primarily just breaking ball strike, but now it's fastball strike, too. So we have to be on top of our games tonight. Q. So much has been made about how teams have looked and maybe field in this series in terms of other players' perceptions of your team and whether they were tight or loose or whatnot. When your team was on the precipice of winning the AL East did you see a certain look in them, and has it kind of shown itself again today as they get prepared to play this game one win away from the World Series? JOE MADDON: We were trying to win the AL East and we were playing the Tigers at that particular time. I don't know, I think when you get to that last stage sometimes, you want it so badly. It's one of those things. But I think getting through the White Sox series has kind of taught us a lesson also, where we got the final game on the road in Chicago. Listen, we're learning all the time, man. It's a very young group. It's very inexperienced, but we do come after you, I think, aggressively every night. So if there was moments in the past that maybe we haven't handled it appropriately, I'd like to think as we gain more experience we're going to start doing a better job of that. For right now I'm walking through our clubhouse and I kind of like the vibe right now. Q. A year ago you were 30 games out of first and you were that manager with the funny glasses. Now, I guess, you're a genius (laughter). Can you tell me what's different, how your life was different now than it was a year ago? JOE MADDON: It's amazing. I've still got the funny glasses -- it's different because you win. Everything changes because you win. All the things we're doing this year we did exactly the same -- a lot of the same stuff last year. Of course, the difference is personnel. You're getting performance. The manager has nothing to do with it. You look at the bullpen, you look at the team, you look at the quality of our players, you've got young guys figuring things out. We've been trying to put these concepts out there for the last three years, but it takes time. You just don't get it done overnight. All of a sudden now our guys are understanding what we were trying to get across. I think the coaching staff has had a tremendous impact on the entire group, not only when you're talking about teaching a guy to hit or where to stand, how to throw, whatever, it's the interaction within the clubhouse. We have guys that will get out there and talk to the players while they're sitting at their chairs, and I like that. Once in a while we might sit at the bar with them and listen to them after the game's over, and I like that. I just think that our coaching staff has had a wonderful impact on what's going on. And when you stay together as a group, you have a much better chance of that occurring. I think when you're constantly rolling things up and there's no kind of continuity, there's no reason to expect that you're ever going to get that. I think we've been together for a while now, all the things are starting to come together a little bit better, but primarily we're just better. I mean the pitching staff is better. The bullpen is a ton better. Offensively, on the field, our defense is better, we've made a lot of little improvements. Q. How about your life, though, in general? What's the difference between now and a year ago? JOE MADDON: For me, honestly, there's not a whole lot. You get recognized a little bit, and that's nice. But I still have my same routines. We go back home, I'll be on the bike and I do my workout routine, and I like to read. And I get to travel a little bit more, but nothing has really changed for me, quite frankly. I know what I like to do, and all this other stuff is kind of cool, but it doesn't really impact me a whole lot. I mean I like being a baseball manager for the Tampa Bay Rays and I feel very fortunate about our success. I'm getting married. That's going to be quite a difference. You all know that, the guys that are still married (laughter). So I've got that coming up in a couple weeks. So I've got to be -- not concerned with that, but anticipating that. November 8th we're going to get married out in California, then we're going to go to Europe. So I mean I think about all that stuff. I'm looking forward to hopefully successfully concluding this whole thing and get on a plane and getting over to Rome, getting off there and just putting a backpack on and hitting the trains and just having a good time. That's what I'm really looking forward to. End of FastScripts |
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