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AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ANGELS v YANKEES

October 17, 2009

Mike Scioscia

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Game Two

THE MODERATOR: First question?

Q. Your club was able to succeed in the Boston series without getting much from Figgins at the top of the order. This can't go on much longer, can it?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Well, you need offense from your whole lineup. It's not always going to happen at the same time where you have three or four guys or nine guys swinging the bats well. And you know, last night we didn't get much going at all against CC. And the little offense we did, Figgie wasn't part of it last night. But it just takes that one hit, that one bloop, that good at-bat to get him back on board.
We certainly need the guys that are hitting in front of Torii, Vlad and whether it's Kendry and Juan Rivera to set the table. Bobby Abreu has been -- I think Figgie and Bobby Abreu all year have been as good a 1-2 as you're going to find. And right now it's going to make things run a lot smoother if Figgie can get into his game.
But I just don't know if it's just one guy that we're going to target right now. It's a lot of being a lead-off guy and hitting in front of the middle of the lineup. There's production that we need. We have a lot of confidence that Figgie will bring that.

Q. Mike, I know your focus is on the team. I wanted to ask you, Joe Girardi was in here the other day and he referred to you as the "face of the Angels" --
MIKE SCIOSCIA: That's an ugly look.

Q. I wonder when you hear that does it make you feel proud? And with all that you've accomplished, do you feel that it's accurate?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: No, I don't think it's accurate. I think being the manager and having the privilege to work with such a great organization from the owner down to the general manager all the way down to the guys who are in players development and scouting, it's a team effort. And it's not one guy that's running point on this thing. It's a whole group of guys that I think are very creative, have great baseball minds and it's just fun to be around and fun to keep moving in the right direction.
I certainly don't feel like it's a one-man deal. I know it's not a one-man deal. And I think that if you're going to look to someone of being the face of an organization, I think you're probably going to look to a player -- to a player that's contributed a lot over the years, whether it's, you know, Timmy Salmon or Vlad Guerrero or Garret Anderson or John Lackey, or Torii Hunter now, I think those guys are the guys on the field that are going -- you're going to win or lose with and that's where the focus should be.

Q. Mike, so many questions last night were addressed to your players about it not being Angels baseball, the fundamentals and all.
Do you think your guys take that personally and will take that forward tonight in that regard?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: I expect to us play a lot better, I do, and I think we will tonight. Maybe there was some jitters. Maybe it was just getting used to the environment, I don't know. But I expect to us play a lot better baseball. And we'll have to.
As far as Angels baseball, I don't even know if there's such a thing. It's just fundamental baseball that we try to apply every day. And for the lion's share of the season our guys have done a terrific job, especially on the defensive end. So when you see a game like last night, it's very uncharacteristic for that group of guys to give up that much in a game. I expect to us play better. I really feel we will.

Q. Mike, first could you just give us the lineup?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Yes, our lineup will be Figgins, Abreu, Hunter, Guerrero, Morales, Rivera, Izturis, Napoli, and Aybar and Joe Saunders pitching.

Q. Girardi said they have a mound as part of their clubhouse batting tunnel that they'd use if there was a rain delay for their pitcher. Do you have similar facilities for your guy?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Yes, we do.

Q. You have the same arrangement?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Yes.

Q. Mike, obviously Torii as a veteran player, as a guy who speaks out in the clubhouse a lot and takes care of a lot of things, how much can you rely on him amongst some other guys to make sure the stuff that happened last night doesn't happen anymore?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Well, you're never going to be 100% sure you're not going to have some mistakes in the game and there are going to be some mistakes in the game. I think the amount of them we saw last night was a little -- was uncharacteristic for our club. I don't think a team can get as far as we have without leadership in that clubhouse. And Torii is certainly a guy that is running point with that. He enjoys that role. He enjoys talking baseball. When you put Torii there with Bobby Abreu and a John Lackey and guys that are just -- you know, Darren Oliver, these guys are great sounding boards for young players.
We have great leadership on this team from the player end of it. And it goes lot more than anything we can do as staff. So, yeah, I think -- I know Torii he talks baseball with these guys all day. I don't know if anyone needed to have anything pointed out to them on that pop-up that dropped. That's something that should be taken care of right away. I know our guys will get better at that.

Q. Mike, when you're facing A.J. Burnett, what's the most important aspects you want your guys to have in their approach against him?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Well, there's balance. You can't just sit back and let him get into good pitcher's counts, especially early in the game. But you have to balance that to see where his -- where his stuff is. Is he getting pitches into zones? Can you get into good hitter's counts with him by making working some counts?
There's a lot of feel that's going to go on. He's definitely not the guy you want to be sitting 0-1 and 0-2 all night because he's got as good a fastball/breaking ball combination as there is in baseball. I think when a guy throws as hard as he does with a good breaking ball, when you get it into a hitting count, it's going to be important for you to square a ball up when he does make the mistake and take advantage of that hitting count. You can't just let him get into pitcher's counts all night because he knows what to do with them, with that stuff.

Q. Mike, does it seem to you that there have been more questionable calls this postseason? And what are your thoughts on expanding instant replay?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Instant replay is really used in the scope I think that it should be used in. It should not be expanded.
I think for home run calls, fair or foul home run calls, fan interference calls, whether it's home run or not, there's a practical application that I think will be useful. Outside of that, no; no room in this game for instant replay, in my opinion.

Q. Bobby had been really good about taking borderline pitches when they were balls. Last night he had a couple of called strike 3s. Did you guys do a good job of adjusting to their umpire strike zone last night or were you maybe too patient for a change?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Timmy McClelland behind plate, he's as good as there is on balls and strikes. If he sees it as a strike, you're pretty much going to get the same strike call from him all night long. There's some pitches that Bobby thought were borderline that were called strikes. That's happened during the year at times too. I think Bobby knows the strike zone and he adjusts to it and a couple that he didn't swing at were called strikes. That's happened during the season too.

Q. After the club wasn't able to re-sign Teixeira in the off season, how fortunate or fortuitous was it that Morales would blossom into the kind of power hitter that he became?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Well, in a couple of templates we were looking at if we did sign Tex, then Kendry was going to play the outfield for us. He was going to get his opportunity. When we couldn't sign Tex, it opened up the opportunity to sign a number of guys, which gave us an incredibly deep look. As the season has moved on I think that's been proved out. Guys like Juan Rivera, Bobby Abreu, Brian Fuentes. These guys all were guys that we might not have been looking at had we signed Tex.
For Kendry to blossom was as important as anything we saw this season. Certainly from the offensive end. For a while we were leading all of baseball in runs scored and going up through the middle of August and Kendry was a huge part of that, as he got comfortable into the game, into the batter's box. So it turned out being very, very important to us especially with Vlad out of the lineup and Torii out of the lineup for as much as they were, that Kendry was there and had such -- he just had a terrific offensive year. That's very, very important.

Q. I apologize for jumping ahead a little bit. Looking at Weaver, his start against the Red Sox, what stood out to you in that outing and kind of the way -- he had some second-half struggles. What did he do to rebound from those?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: The way Jered pitched in Game 2 of the Division Series is a lot of things we talked about with CC Sabathia last night. His ability to control both sides of the plate, get into the zone with his fastball, change speeds, and really had a power breaking ball that he was using it on off-counts at times too. So he had everything working in balance.
And outside of Ellsbury hit a triple and I think Martinez had a base hit for their run, he was on top of those guys the whole way. Really was in pitcher's counts the whole night.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Mike.

End of FastScripts

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