	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: CARDINALS v BREWERS

October 15, 2011

Ron Roenicke

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN: Workout Day

Q. Ron, I know there's not a whole lot more you can say about the home field advantage because at this point we've talked about it so much, but is now more than ever you guys talk about you guys need to walk the walk and be that team that's so dominant at home?
RON ROENICKE: Yes, we do. Yeah, I think coming back home we know how good we've been here. We're confident here. Certainly we have to play a lot better game than we played a couple of the games in St. Louis. And I expect our guys to do it.

Q. Is this anything like coming home after game 4 in Arizona?
RON ROENICKE: Similar. Yes. I thought we played that nice game in game 5 here, and this is really the same situation. It's just hopefully it's going to be two of them in a row.

Q. Ron, of course a lot is being made about how Tony is using his bullpen, and successful at that. But a little different than a lot of managers would use it. What do you make of it and is it a surprise to you or does it reflect as he said yesterday the kind of the essence of October and having to win the games?
RON ROENICKE: I think when you look at his roster he carried an extra pitcher for the series. I'm sure for that reason. That he thought that he was going to do what he's doing. Yesterday's game Tony pulled all the right moves. Everything he did turned out well. And I think with the bullpen you have to have a lot of confidence in not just your back end, but the way he's doing it he's gotta have a lot of confidence in his long guys, too, although they're usually going maybe two innings. It's not like they're going three or four. But he's got a lot of confidence in his bullpen. If he's putting them in in front of his starters he's saying that I think these guys are going to do better than what my starters are going to do.
And that's what our situation. Do we feel like our middle guys and bullpen are better than what our starters are and if they're better you try to get that starter out of there when he gets in trouble?

Q. The word resiliency has been used a lot with you guys this year. Where does this come from. Why is this been such a resilient team?
RON ROENICKE: I think we've had to be. To get to this point if we hadn't been, we would have never got into the playoffs. I think early on because we played poorly for a while, it took some time, I think, to figure out that we are good. We knew how to play and how to win. Not that they didn't have that in years past, but I just think with this new group of guys, the way we started out, they came out of spring training really thinking we were going to come out and play well from the get go and we didn't. So I think guys had to -- the penalties they had to persevere. They had to figure out how we come back from some losing streaks, how we come back from playing really poorly on the road the first half of the season. And that's why we're here, because of their penalties and attitudes, and figuring things out, how to go about it so we can get back in this thing and ending up winning our division?

Q. Ron, can a game like yesterday be at all deflating at this point in the post season for a team or conversely can it put a little extra fire in your belly? Either one of those things do you see?
RON ROENICKE: I don't think it putts extra fire in your belly, but they understand that we didn't play a good game yesterday, and the first game at St. Louis. And hopefully, you know, when you look through the season and when we had these games, and we had them at times where we didn't play well, but they always bounced back. And I'm expecting the same thing tomorrow.

Q. Along the same lines, what signs did you see on the flight home that they had already turned the page like they had before? Did you see anything?
RON ROENICKE: I didn't see much. You know, it's a downer game, I think, and late-night flight home. So I don't think you see a whole lot there. I think today when I see the reaction of the guys and certainly tomorrow when they come in, but they'll be fine. They have been every game this year. I don't know why it would change now.

Q. With the guys that you have in your bullpen, the guys with closing experience, I wondered how valuable it was to sort of shorten the game as you guys went on your run during the season? That idea that if you get through and whether or not that's more important or just as important in the post season? Is that a bigger asset in these small series?
RON ROENICKE: Right. Yeah. That's a good question because it was important for our starters to go six innings during the season. That's how we ended up being so good. They went six, seven innings, whatever the case, and you hand it over to a bullpen that was pretty lights-out. And we need to do the same thing here. In the post season we've scuffled a lot because our starters haven't gone into the sixth and seventh innings, so Wolfy had the great start, but we need our guys to get deep there. If that's deep. I mean sixth inning is not that deep. But it is with our bullpen.
You know, like I mentioned the three guys between Loe, Hawk and Saito usually taking care of the sixth and seventh inning and they get to the big boys there at the end 8 and 9?

Q. Shaun Marcum has had two shaky starts in the post season. Confidence level do you feel for him going into game 6. Do you feel like he can shake off the past two and have the mental capabilities to focus on tomorrow and the task at hand?
RON ROENICKE: I think he can. I think he's a guy that understands how to pitch. I think he got out of his game a little bit the last couple games he's pitched. And I think he'll figure some things out.
You know, I always bring up where he was the last few years, and it is a difference. It is a difference when he knows he's gotta go in and face the Bostons and the New Yorks and face those line ups. And Shaun always was able to do that. So I don't expect him to stay where he was the last few games. I still don't think that he's pitched as bad as what those numbers are. We make some plays for him and those numbers change quite a bit.

Q. How important do you think it is to get on the board early tomorrow and really get the crowd going?
RON ROENICKE: Well, I think that's always important for our team. I think when we're really good, we put a lot of pressure on them early. We haven't been able to do that, but it is important. Is it a must? No, because we can still go through a game and explode for a big inning somewhere in the middle of the game or near the end.
So it's always better if we come out and bust out early. Like you said, I think the crowd gets involved then. I think our players feed off of that well, and so hopefully we'll do that?

Q. Isn't this just the Brewer way this season? You guys never take the past of least resistance. I mean it's always like you put yourselves in these kind of positions and figure a way out of them.
RON ROENICKE: We have. This season we've done it all year. It's certainly not the ideal script, but it's worked. And I think every time we're pushed, I think we play well. Certainly we're being pushed right now. We've got two games against a team that's playing really good. And one thing about St. Louis, they don't seem to give away games. I thought -- not that we gave away the games yesterday and the first one in St. Louis, but we really hurt ourselves by the way we played. St. Louis doesn't seem to do that. So we have to play the style of game that when we've been pushed that we have played?

Q. Do you believe that the struggles of your starters to some extent are just a question of them not being as crisp or sharp as usual or is it also part of an inflexion of a really good deep St. Louis line up playing at its peak capacity?
RON ROENICKE: It's both. It's a very good offense that battles well. They understand how to hit. They're not up there just hacking at the first thing they see, unless it's a mistake and they put a good swing on it. They stay inside the ball real well, use the whole field. And those guys are tough to go through a lineup. Yesterday there wasn't a whole lot of swing and misses with Zack pitching, no strike outs and really hardly any swing and misses. They battle well. Their offense is good.
I think if we make our pitches, I think we get them out.

Q. Rickie's having a kind of tough series offensively and defense civil. Have you considered replacing him at all or is he just a guy you stick with and hope he battles through it some way?
RON ROENICKE: Yeah. I think you stick with him. You know, Rickie's a guy that our lineup depends on Rickie. We depend on him swinging the bat well. He protects Prince. He's got the ability to if you get a couple of guys on base to drive the ball out of a ballpark. And we felt like coming into the playoffs that we needed Rickie, we needed his presence in there behind Prince. And I know his swings have gotten better. But I know there's still some things that he's not locked in there, both offensively and defense civil.

Q. And Prince didn't do much in St. Louis either. They're controlling him pretty good. Is there any connection there? Is he being pitched tougher or different because Rickie's not doing anything different behind him?
RON ROENICKE: I don't think so. I think Prince is pitched tough regardless of who's behind him. When you're talking about pitching to some of these guys. We talk about Pujols. They talk about Prince and Braune. When you're talking about those guys, you can't ever pitch them where you say I'm going after them. I don't care what the situation is. You never do that. So Prince is pitched the same regardless of whether we have a guy on first base, regardless of if nobody's on base. When they pitch to him, he's pitched the same way, very carefully?

Q. If Marcum struggles early tomorrow, have you mapped out who's going to be available out of your bullpen and will that include any of your starters?
RON ROENICKE: We've mapped it out.

Q. Can you give any specifics?
RON ROENICKE: No. No. But we have mapped it out.

Q. (Indiscernible).
RON ROENICKE: No, Yo is not an option. You know, really you guys talk about Yo and coming back on three days' rest. We have to win tomorrow and the next day. You know, I don't know why I would bring back Yo to win tomorrow when it would hurt us then for the next day and not being able to win. I don't know if there's a difference there. I think it makes sense to keep Yo on his basic rest.
You know, he wasn't that sharp the other day either. So to bring him back, if we had a chance if we were even up tomorrow, I would say yeah, Yo has a chance to be in our bullpen. But unfortunately we're not in that position.

Q. Since you're sticking with Rickie, I assume that you'll also stick with Hairston because I was just wondering because McGehee had that big game against -- does that sort of mean Hairston is staying too probably?
RON ROENICKE: Well, Hairston is definitely staying. You know, we've talked about that. We've talked about what we can do different things. But Hairston, there's no way I'm taking him out of there. He's been so good. I know yesterday he had a ball that got underneath him. It's not as easy to play as guys think. When you got a left-hander swinging that wants to pull the ball and hits it an opposite way and also the ball stayed down off the lip of the grass, that he is not that easy to play.

Q. Did you give even more than a passing thought of putting case I in and moving Hairston to second or just not so much?
RON ROENICKE: We've talked about it. We talked about it before the series started about some of those things, and you always talk about them because you're always trying to figure out what's the best thing to do. But you know, you've got -- it would be like if Prince is struggling do we take Prince out of there. Braun's struggling, do you take him out? No.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297