NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BRAVES VS DODGERS

October 19, 2021

Luke Jackson

Charlie Morton

Dodger Stadium

Atlanta Braves

Postgame 3 Press Conference

Los Angeles Dodgers - 6, Atlanta Braves - 5

Luke, you look at that pitch, it's a couple inches above the zone. What would you have liked to have done different with that pitch?

LUKE JACKSON: Sad thing is I would do the same thing again.

Q. Curious why that is.

LUKE JACKSON: I was trying to throw a fastball up and away. I actually threw it better than I thought I threw it. Out of my hand, I was like, Oh, that's a ball. It's too high. And no it wasn't too high. It was, you know, good player, put a good swing on it and pretty remarkable.

Q. Charlie, what allowed you to regroup after that first inning? And Luke, also just what you saw from him that you thought was really impressive being able to kind of get back on track.

CHARLIE MORTON: I don't know. I guess the guys putting some runs up on the board and allowing me some time to figure it out out there because my delivery was a little out of whack. Just in the, in a game like this in a place like this it's hard to, normal feedback that I would get during an outing where I can kind of make an adjustment. And I think today it was hard to find that.

It was just more, in this environment and the situation, it was just a little bit tougher. So we bought some time for me to kind of figure it out and unfortunately I just threw too many pitches.

Q. Luke, so many people are going to just knee-jerk reaction. Last year you were up 2-0 and lost the game. If they haven't been watching this team or paying attention it seems like this team is in a different place regardless of losing Game 3. How would you say it is?

LUKE JACKSON: This team, they don't, we walked off two of the first games and that's from comeback wins to just battling at-bats and pitchers finding a way. I think everyone's been huge and everyone's been apart and I think it's how you win games in the playoffs.

Q. Charlie, it looked like after the first inning you backed off your four-seam a bit. Did you just have a better feel for the sinker and the cutter or what went into that?

CHARLIE MORTON: Yeah, I don't know if it was necessarily backing off. I think it was just my changeup was there and my cutter was there. My curve ball, I think my curve ball was fine. Aside from the home run, I think I threw some pretty good breaking balls. It was just that four-seamer just wasn't, the command wasn't there early.

But fortunately the other pitches were. They were there enough. I don't feel like I really backed off of it. I think it was just kind of like trying to figure some things out to get more on line and then at least throw pitches in the zone and challenge some guys.

Q. Charlie, from your experience looking out on this series, how much did it, can it help your team to have pitched five innings today as opposed to like one?

CHARLIE MORTON: I mean, the fact that our bullpen didn't have to pick up additional innings, yeah, I mean, I would have rather thrown more innings than that, but I do think an outing like that, you can definitely learn from that a lot. I definitely will learn and grow from that outing. In some ways I think that outing was very, very rewarding and in some ways it was just very -- it was just a very strange, for me, place to be. It was like I was pitching in two different games almost at one point because after I, they told me I was out, just because the juxtaposition between the first inning and the rest of it, just very extreme.

Q. Charlie, you go back long enough in your career, you've been around 14 years, to see the evolution of what's gone on with pitching. You had eight pitchers on Sunday, five pitchers tonight, and tomorrow is a bullpen game. The Dodgers have used 36 pitchers in their last four playoff games. What do you think about all this? Is there any way of getting back to any sort of, and I won't use the word normalcy, but just a way where you get not so many extreme edges on using so many pitchers?

CHARLIE MORTON: Right. Well, you see that with the three-batter minimum. But I don't know, I personally, having evolved from a four-seam kind of curve ball guy when I was younger over the top to a two-seam guy just pitching to contact and then kind of like a hybrid now, I just feel like my outings now are, on an effort scale, are just much higher than they used to be.

I'm, a lot of times I'm chasing stuff and I don't know why that is exactly. I think swing and miss is at a premium and the flexibility that managers feel like they have with bullpens, openers, you're seeing it over there right now with their guys, different roles. And the name of the game is run prevention and as long as it's working and I think it's working really, really well, I just don't know, I just don't think that without altering the rules of the game you could really fight against that because it's been proven effective.

Q. For either of you, for what you guys experienced as a team this whole year, overcoming some adversity, will that help just push you past this game and no lingering effects the rest of the series?

LUKE JACKSON: Yeah, I mean, I think my first years when I was here we were kind of young in the playoffs. I think when I got over here we had a hundred-loss season almost and going to the playoffs feeling overmatched, going to the playoffs again feeling, rough one against St. Louis, and then get more last year, all the way to Game 7 here.

And now being here again, I think everyone's got a little comfortability and knows that we can compete and we're a great team and we got a great bond together in the clubhouse and I think that pulls real hard.

Q. Along that line, Luke, is this one a little easier for you to absorb considering where your team is at? You were up 2-1 instead of the other way around.

LUKE JACKSON: Yeah, it hurts. I mean, we lost the game because I made a couple bad pitches that, you know, some days are outs and some days they're home runs.

To feel like this is like a dagger. No, this is just, you know, a speed bump in the road and I wish it didn't happen and I wish we were up 3-0 going into Game 4 and having a chance to sweep, but I have no doubt at all in just our team coming back and just stronger tomorrow and ready to recollect and roll.