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NL DIVISION SERIES: ROCKIES v PHILLIES

October 6, 2009

Jim Tracy

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Workout Day

Q. Between the end of last season and the beginning of this season, both teams kind of got rid of long-time power-hitting left fielders. The Phillies decided to fill it with free agents; you guys went a different route. How has that worked out for you?
JIM TRACY: Well, we've used more than one guy out there, and quite frankly -- or I should say we have what we consider to be a very exciting young player in Carlos Gonzalez, who has made great strides since we acquired him in a trade since last winter.
Seth Smith is another guy that has done yeoman's work, whether he's in the lineup or coming off the bench to hit for us.
Left field for us has been a situation from a starting standpoint in the game, a guy that makes the most sense in a given situation as far as who are we playing, who's the starting pitcher, that type of thing.
I think also you've got to throw Ryan Spilborghs in that mix. Those are three guys that have done a lot of work in left field, and we've used one of the three or maybe two of the three on a given day where we would rest Fowler, where Gonzalez slides over and plays center field. On any day where we would have Gonzalez and Fowler in the game at the same time, we have two centers fielders in two-thirds of our outfield.
So from that standpoint, we just try to do the thing that makes the most sense, and we feel is the best fit in a given situation and/or a given game, depending upon who the starting pitcher is that we're facing.

Q. Sometimes when managers take over, they're just named just to get a different voice. But you made some specific moves right when you took over. Could you talk about the impact that you thought those moves had on the team?
JIM TRACY: Well, I don't want to sit here and have it seem like there were a tremendous number of different moves that were made, because I really don't feel like there were. It's pretty much within exception of some bullpen pieces that we added as the season went on. But day in, day out, it's a fairly similar ballclub that was playing against the Phillies in our home opener back in April.
But there is some continuity to this club, and there's consistency to our bullpen. I think maybe a couple of moves that you're referring to is that obviously Ian Stewart is a guy that got an awful lot of playing time at third base, and Clint Barmes didn't walk into our clubhouse from day-to-day and wonder is he in there today, is he not in there today, and that has been a dynamic, I think, that has worked to our benefit in a big way, because between he and Troy Tulowitzki, not only have both of them been fairly dynamic offensive players for us, but I really feel like the middle infield tandems of these two clubs in this series are dynamic in themselves in that these are four of the better middle infielders that there are in the National League. It doesn't get much better than Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins and Clint Barmes and Troy Tulowitzki can do some very special things.
The thing that -- the add-on for us really is also on the offensive side, where I think they roughly between the two of them have about 55 home runs and about 160 to 170 RBIs. That kind of over-profiles.
Believe me, this is the first club I've managed in the Big Leagues where the shortstop that I've played day in and day out hits fourth on the club and has 32 home runs and 90-plus RBIs. That's not something that I have visited too often during the course of my managerial career, believe me.

Q. Street said he had a lot to prove this season to myself. When you took over, what did you know of him and what did you think of him, not now but then when you took over?
JIM TRACY: Well, I think that the best explanation I could give you of Huston Street is he reminds me an awful lot of Dennis Eckersley from the standpoint that Eck was a perfectionist, and he prided himself on making a perfect pitch every time he threw one.
Huston Street has been about as close to that as any reliever that you would want to talk about in the American or National League this year. He is a perfectionist. He prides himself in being that way. You know, he can make you misfire when you swing at his pitches and not hit the ball very well, he can strike you out. He has the type of makeup and personality that has to be a part of a guy pitching the ninth inning, that he relishes the moment, looks forward to it. He's had a very, very special year.
Maybe the part he's talking to you about that he had something to prove is people were getting to the point where they were doubting him a little bit, maybe he felt like he was falling off a little bit. That's not the case. He's done nothing but get better and better as the year has gone on.
We had to shut him down a few weeks, the better part of a few weeks. Really, since he's come back, I think that's only enhanced him.

Q. He was talking about going into the year.
JIM TRACY: Yeah, I think that was maybe what was happening in the latter part of the last year, something like that, when he was in Oakland prior to the trade that maybe he had a message to send, and if, in fact, that's the way he felt about it, I think he sent it pretty loud and clear.

Q. There were long stretches of the season where it seemed like every decision you made, no matter how conventional or unconventional, worked. Was there ever a time when you laughed to yourself or ran your fingers through your hair and wondered, why can't it always be this simple?
JIM TRACY: No, not really. You know, I go back to something that a guy that I really believe was my mentor when I first started coaching in the Major Leagues back in '95 with Felipe Alou, and I've always worked under this premise, and I do things that I feel that at the time are right. They may not work out. They may be easily second-guessed as a result of them not working out. But something he said to me that never, ever goes away is it's my job to gain a real understanding as to what my players can and cannot do. I rarely, if ever, have asked one of my players to do something that I know in my mind that in sending them out there that this is not a real good forum for their skill set.
And I think if you expose your players to situations that make the most sense for their abilities that it's okay to think that this is going to work out. It may not, but I don't ever have to walk into my office and feel like I've compromised the abilities of one of my players. I think that's the way you do it, and that's how you do it correctly.

Q. How many decisions regarding tomorrow's lineup do you still have to make tonight?
JIM TRACY: None.

Q. All set?
JIM TRACY: Mm-hmm, yeah. I think with that being said, I haven't formally made the announcement. I will now, and that is that our first three starters will be Ubaldo Jimenez, Aaron Cook and Jason Hammel. But I won't go any further than that because I don't want to make any type of commitment for Game 4 at this point in time. But those three guys will pitch the first three games of this series.

Q. A follow-up on why Jason Hammel as opposed to Jason Marquis for Game 3, and then my follow-up question to that, do you expect the Phillies to press the action and run a lot, and if so, how do you guys -- what are the steps you're going to take to handle that?
JIM TRACY: Well, in regard to the first part, or the first question I should say, you can't ignore what you've been looking at over the course of a period of time, and I think it's very safe to say that Jason Hammel has stepped up and has pitched extremely well during the course of the second half of the season. As a matter of fact, he's come on like gang busters.
And so in the case of Jason Marquis, we're going start out in the first three games of the series and have him available to pitch out of our bullpen. He has not thrown the ball -- you know, you've heard an awful lot, there's an awful lot talked about as far as what he does or what he had done in the past in the first half and the second half, and you've heard me talk about it. I don't look at it that way for the fact that I don't think it's a first-half, second-half scenario with Jason Marquis. I think the first two-thirds of the season were exceptional, and right now he's not throwing the ball quite in the same manner in which he was in the first two-thirds of the season. And to ignore a guy that has thrown the ball as well as Jason Hammel has thrown it since the All-Star break, I really feel like we're doing ourselves a disservice. It's about this entire group. That's how we got here. That's how we were able to climb out of the hole that we were in.
It's not a matter of reward. It's something, a message that I sent back on the 29th of May, and I want to feel like with these players I have in this clubhouse and the respect, and I guess you could say the love affair that I've developed with these guys, one of the things I said to them back four and a half months ago is this is a performance-oriented business. When you start managing with your heart and not your eyes and your head, you normally end up running into a road block somewhere.
And so as a result of that, what my eyes have been telling me here for quite a long period of time is that Jason Hammel has stepped up big-time, has been a guy that in big games against ones and twos and other clubs' rotations has not only won games but has put us in a position to win some of these games that he was involved in the no decision. I think he is -- at this point in time today, he's the right guy to pitch that game.
As far as the second part of your question, or second question that you asked, you know, this team we're playing, let's face it, they're the defending world champions, and they have a lot of weapons. They're a very talented team. They're a very experienced team. They're capable of doing a lot of things in a lot of different facets of the game.
I think part of what you have to do in order to control anybody's running game is when you talk about someone's running game, there's obviously significant people involved in that, and they have a couple guys at the top of their lineup just like we do that if they get on base, they can do damage to you that way. So how well will we be able to control their offense?
I think with what they have through the middle of their order, if we're not able to control some of the speed guys in their lineup, we're putting them in a position to be able to score runs easily. When you play a club like this of this caliber, when you allow this team to constantly get in situations where they're able to score runs easily, and what I mean by that is they get on, they're able to steal a base, they get to third, there's less than two outs, early enough in the game where -- or they've got multiple runners on and first base is unoccupied, you don't want to give up two runs on a bloop hit; you put guys that position where they can manufacture runs against you. So your pitching staff has to be able to control their offense a little bit. If we don't, then we're not going to have a chance to be very successful against them. But if we do, then I think we have a really good chance to be successful against them.

Q. You've been in the postseason before. Can you talk about the different feeling you may have this time as opposed to, I believe, in '05, and also, are there things that you learned going through the postseason before that could benefit you this time around?
JIM TRACY: It was '04, and yes, when I say -- maybe not so much that I've learned, but looking at some of the different opportunities you have with regard to personnel that you didn't have let's say a few years ago, I can honestly tell you this, and not taking anything a way from the 2004 club that I managed, I personally feel from a pitching staff standpoint we're better equipped, especially from a standing pitching standpoint than the team that I managed in 2004 was.
We have a very formidable guy pitching in Game 1. In 2004, we clinched the division the second last day of the season, and as a result of having to do that or having to go that far to get it done, we were somewhat fractured because we did not have the time to set our rotation up the way you would want it to play against the Cardinal team that we played against in the Division Series.
So I think we're definitely further along that way than we were -- than I was as a manager I should say back five years ago. You know, we're a very athletic team. This team is very athletic. We are very capable of manufacturing runs. We've done an awful lot of that to put ourselves in the position that we're in. I would really say top to bottom, the talent on this team, I'm managing a little bit better team from the standpoint of physical capabilities than I had five years ago.

Q. What's the status of Jorge De La Rosa?
JIM TRACY: Jorge is not going to be part of the Division Series. As a matter of fact, our medical people had been working with him, working on him I should say, over the last couple of days, and his groin is about the same as it was when we had to remove him from the game Saturday night in Los Angeles. He was scheduled to throw a bullpen today. We're not even going to take that chance. We're not going to have him do that. We're going to continue working with him.
We are in a position I really believe that if we're fortunate to advance beyond here, could he end up in the mix and be a guy that could be considered for a League Championship Series if we're fortunate enough to get there? I think that's definitely a viable possibility. But he doesn't have any chance to pitch during the course of the Division Series.

End of FastScripts

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