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NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: GIANTS v PHILLIESOctober 17, 2010Charlie ManuelPHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Game Two THE MODERATOR: Okay. We'll take questions for Charlie Manuel. Q. Any lineup changes today, other than the pitcher? CHARLIE MANUEL: Got Utley hitting second instead of third. Split Howard and Utley up. Polanco is hitting third. Outside of that we've got the same lineup. Q. That's the first time you've done that over the past couple post-seasons. What made you -- CHARLIE MANUEL: Same reason I always do it: I want to kind of just have a right-handed hitter in between them. Q. Polanco? CHARLIE MANUEL: Polanco is hitting third. Q. Charlie, as good as Sanchez has been against you guys, what do you guys have to do to kind of get to him? Is it taking pitches? Is it trying to get to him early? What do you guys have to do here, do you feel? CHARLIE MANUEL: We've got to make him throw the ball over the plate and we can't -- and basically almost just kind of similar to Lincecum. He's got a real hard slider, and it's a late-breaker. If you go, look, watch his games, the hitters chase -- especially when he gets ahead of them, they chase his slider a lot, like down, out of the strike zone. And at times, he can get wild. He'll walk some guys during the game, usually around four or five, things like that. Maybe even more times. You've got to be patient. But at the same time you've got to get a good ball to hit. If we do that, I mean, we'll be fine. Q. Jaime Moyer was saying the other day he feels 100 percent healthy through all his pitches in the bullpen. Was there any consideration putting him on the LCS roster as a reliever? Would you think about it for the World Series if you made it that far? CHARLIE MANUEL: I talked to him the other day, he came in and talked to me, and I talked to him about, he hasn't pitched. He hasn't pitched in a game. I find that a little tough. I mean, I think we have a rotation set up. And, like, he pitched out of the bullpen last year for a while. But he was always a long guy, and if you remember he pitched in two rain delays. We definitely had time to get him up and get him ready and that sort of thing. But right here, we're still talking about a completely different thing. I mean, he hasn't had any game action at all. Q. Did you seriously consider moving Jimmy up or down? And why didn't you in the end? CHARLIE MANUEL: Why didn't I? Because when I looked, I liked him right where he was at, because I look at how he's been doing and also the fact that how we lined up against Sanchez. Victorino's got some hits on Sanchez. I think he's like 5 for-16 or something; Jimmy's 1-for-16. Utley's got a few hits. Howard's got -- the way we lined up. I like Jimmy down there where he's at right now. Q. First of all, do you have a Game 4 starter yet? And second, would the fact that the Giants have beaten Halladay twice this year weigh into your decision at all as to whether to bring him back? CHARLIE MANUEL: We haven't talked about -- Rich and I, we were planning on starting Blanton. We said that the other day. That's still our plan. But we'll just take it day to day and see what happens. I mean, our plans are Blanton. Q. It's been a small sample, but what have you seen from Domonic Brown and what do you see in the future for him? CHARLIE MANUEL: I see the more experience he gets, like, he's got a chance to be a real good player. He's what I call -- he's a high talented player. His tools grade out across the board. He grades out good. Got power. Hit in Minor Leagues, tremendous arm and tremendous running speed. He needs experience and he needs to improve his game as far as like just in general. And I think by playing, that's how he's going to get better. Q. Back to the lineup, I know you talked about Rollins. But what are the benefits to Polanco and Utley flipping them? I know you did it a couple times this year. CHARLIE MANUEL: I like to get the right-hander -- I like to split my lineup. We've got a switch-hitter leading off, and Utley second and then Polanco and we got Howard. Kind of a bridge between the two lefties. Q. In Roy Oswalt's start it appeared he and Ruiz had more mound conferences, did you see that? And did you get the sense Roy wasn't as comfortable as he normally is during his start? CHARLIE MANUEL: I see that, like -- are you telling me that he felt uncomfortable? Q. What was your sense of why that was happening, why the more mound conferences? CHARLIE MANUEL: I figured that he wanted to make sure that they were on the right page about how he was going to pitch guys or basically how he wanted to pitch them or something. That's what I got. What did you get? Q. Not sure. I wasn't down there. CHARLIE MANUEL: Okay. Q. Brown talked a lot the other day about how much Jayson Werth has been on him, the kind of influence he's been on him, teaching him, working with him one-on-one. Did you see any of that? And does that surprise you at all the way Werth has taken Dom under his wing? CHARLIE MANUEL: He hasn't got to play, so I haven't seen it. He hasn't got to play. Like, I haven't seen -- once he gets to playing, his talent, when he gets experience and everything like that. I don't know, I haven't talked to him about it, like what they've been talking about or how he's helped them or something like that. You have to go ask him that. Really, that's kind of how I look at that. Q. Did you give any consideration at all to starting Francisco against a lefty today? CHARLIE MANUEL: I looked at the numbers; he's 0-for-8. But at the same time, like I also look at it as Raul had a good second half. Good hits off lefties and he's come through and he's good in the clutch for us. I mean, the hits that he's got has been big ones. Q. This team has not been down in the series very much too much since 2007. How much does experience, all these guys that have been here in the playoffs and done everything they've done, how much does it help you in this situation to be able to bounce back in the series? CHARLIE MANUEL: Our team has experience, and our team has showed in the past it can be down and come back. I mean, we were seven and a half games behind the Braves with a month to go and we caught them. We ended like something 30-some games, 32-games over .500. And after Houston beat us in here, we were, like, what 13 over or something? Something like that. We ended it with about 35 games to go, we won like 27 or something, 28 of them, 27 or something. We've been down before. Yeah, we lost the game. We also won the first three games in the other division playoffs. So what I'm trying to say, yeah, we lost the first game of the playoff. It's up to us to come back and play good today. It's all up to us. I mean, we can control where we're going and what we're going to do. It happens to be two teams playing and the Giants want to win, too. Basically like what I talk about every day, last night they did what I talk about. They caught the ball in the right situation. They hit the ball in the right situation, and they pitched in the right situation. They did their job. Q. Jimmy Rollins said last night that he's starting to see some of the things he's doing. Do you see any indication in his approaches to his at-bats that he's maybe working his way out of a slump or something? Or is he still a long way off in terms of what he's doing? CHARLIE MANUEL: At times I've seen things that show me that he's getting better. Last night he had -- it was a tough night for him. But I've seen times in the past where he's looked better. THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Charlie. End of FastScripts |
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