NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ASTROS v CARDINALS

October 14, 2004

Morgan Ensberg

MORGAN ENSBERG: Well, I mean, we got to really look at the exact situations. When those runners were left on -- I'm a guy that looks at perspective and so forth. Over, you know, a longer period of time, those runs are going to be hit in. If you just happen to be in a spot when, you know, you're not really doing it right then, you try really not to read into that too much. You try to take the overall -- just you try to step back and look at it from a grander picture. Unfortunately, these games are more important, so it is a little bit disappointing. But you can't really put it on yourself too hard.

MORGAN ENSBERG: Well, I think we've been playing baseball in these first two games kind of how you want to, especially coming in as a visiting team. You come in, want to get ahead early, you want to make them climb and fight back. You know, again, the Cardinals have an outstanding offensive team. It just seems like if you get a guy in scoring position, they're going to have good at-bats. You kind of miss with a pitch, they're going to really capitalize on it. So, again, I mean, we want to make sure that they're still playing catchup, but at the same time we definitely want to make sure that we can hold those leads.

MORGAN ENSBERG: We play Womack in the hole. You're just sitting there waiting. JK (Kent) is going to get over there to second base. You throw there. It's not a play where I'm going to all of a sudden want to go to first base or something like that. I think really, leading the runner, meaning Jeff Kent, into that type of thing is a really low-percentage play. So you want to make sure you want to get an out and so forth. But that's what was going on there.

MORGAN ENSBERG: I don't know if you've got that right -- we positioned Jeff Kent such that it's in the hole.

MORGAN ENSBERG: Oh, okay.

MORGAN ENSBERG: Yes, if we positioned Jeff Kent in a different spot, we can turn a double-play.

MORGAN ENSBERG: I think my first at-bat, he was real tough to me. Put two balls in great spots, inside corner. I absolutely flailed at a slider. It's difficult for me to assess what's going on when I'm not batting. I have a difficult time because I'm not sure whether it's in or out. I felt we had some good at-bats. But, again, it's kind of the same old story. It seems if you need to make a pitch, he made it. I think he did a good job. He certainly kept their team in it when we definitely had some chances there to put some runs on the board.

MORGAN ENSBERG: When you look at how many outs there are in an inning and so forth, you're looking at really it's a question of opportunity each inning. When you have two outs, there's less of an opportunity to score runs only because you only have one more out. They've done an outstanding job with two strikes. I'm not really sure -- excuse me, with two outs. I'm not really sure why that is. They've done a great job of battling in those situations. I think you guys would have a much better idea, looking back at it. I don't think as ball players we look at it so in depth as that. We're really more concentrating in the moment. But they've done a great job with two outs.

MORGAN ENSBERG: Again, kind of what we alluded to a little bit earlier, we had gotten ahead in these games and we felt pretty good about that. We did not score runs, you know, later in the game and we kind of gave up some runs. When we go home, we feel really good and confident with how we play at home. And so, you know, you certainly don't want to leave this place 0-2. You want to -- obviously, you'd love to be 2-0 and you'd much rather split. But, again, we've played very well at home. I think we feel really confident at home. In the clubhouse it's not a situation where everybody's down and moping around as if we can't do it. We did some very good things in both of these games and put some runs up on the board and we really, I think, did a good job against their starters and against their relievers. So I don't think we feel intimidated or down whatsoever. I think we're just in a bad spot. Of course we've been playing four months in a bad spot, so we're in very familiar area.