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NL DIVISION SERIES: CARDINALS v PHILLIES

October 2, 2011

Charlie Manuel

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Game Two

Cardinals Â– 5
Phillies - 4

Q. The 7th inning, did you have any thought of taking Lee out after the Cardinals evened the game?
CHARLIE MANUEL: No, I didn't. More than likely if we had two guys on base, I might have hit for him. But at the same time, once we didn't get there, I was sending him back out.

Q. I know anything can happen in baseball, but when Cliff had the 4-0 lead on the second inning, what's your confidence level?
CHARLIE MANUEL: Well, we felt real good about ourselves. You know, we got Carpenter out of the game early, and we felt real good about ourselves, and we were trying to get into their bullpen. What came -- the big problem was that their bullpen held us. What did we get? One hit? We got two hits, two hits after that. I mean, basically their bullpen held us.

Q. What changed for Cliff as the game went on? What happened?
CHARLIE MANUEL: Well, they had a lot of base runners. I mean, they had base runners on base most of the game, and I felt like in the 6th with two outs, the ball that Jay rolled into left field was a big hit. That's what tied the game up. But at the same time, they had a lot of runners on. He had, what, nine or ten strikeouts. He was throwing pretty good, but they had a lot of runners on base.

Q. The first inning 2-0 lead, runners in the corners and no out, a huge inning is a potential. You score one run there. Is there any thought at the time that man, we could have really put this thing away, or did you think that was enough?
CHARLIE MANUEL: What's that?

Q. You had a 2-0 lead with runners on the corners and nobody out in the first inning. You only ended up adding one more run. Was there any thought at the time that you let a couple opportunities get away or did you think that was enough?
CHARLIE MANUEL: Well, basically what it was, when we scored the three runs, IbaÃ±ez, he hit a single to left field, knocked in a big one. That became a big run for us early. That put us up by three.
But also, we had a couple chances there, if we could have got a big hit, blow-out hit or something, we definitely could have scored more runs. But at the same time, when we score four runs early like that and we get into their bullpen, I was pretty much thinking we was going to score some more runs.

Q. Tony apparently voiced some displeasure on the broadcast and to Jerry (Meals) about his strike zone. How did you see the strike zone tonight? It looked like Cliff was frustrated.
CHARLIE MANUEL: He threw a couple close pitches, but again, I'm not able to -- location, I can see height and things, but as far as where the ball is at, in and out, it's hard to see over there. But you can tell height-wise. Yeah, I mean, it looked like there were some good -- he threw some good pitches. They were talking about it in our dugout. That's kind of -- I'm not blaming it on the umpire. I mean, they outplayed us. They outhit us and they scored more runs than we did.

Q. Your evaluation of your bullpen, Bastardo and Worley, please.
CHARLIE MANUEL: Our bullpen did fine. I mean, they did very good. We got some big outs there, and we got a big double play after we loaded the bases from Theriot, and they did fine. Madson was good at the end, of course. But they ended up scoring one more run than we did.

Q. The IbaÃ±ez throw to the plate at the time seemed like a pretty pivotal play. Did you feel that could have been a game-changer considering the pitcher went out and had a 1, 2, 3 inning next inning?
CHARLIE MANUEL: I was hoping that that throw to the plate would definitely -- momentum would shift to our side because once they started scoring runs the momentum of the game definitely shifted. Like I said, they got a lot of hits and they had guys on base a lot. They had chances to score and they chipped away at us. They stayed on us and they caught us and took a lead and we couldn't get them.

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