NL WILD CARD SERIES: PHILLIES VS CARDINALS

October 8, 2022

Oliver Marmol

Busch Stadium

St. Louis Cardinals

Pregame Press Conference

Q. How did Helsley exams go, and what's the update on him today?

OLIVER MARMOL: Got an MRI. MRI was clean. So she's good.

Q. Ollie, I know it's all hands on deck, but he threw 33 pitches yesterday. Is he still available even after doing that?

OLIVER MARMOL: Helsley will not be available today.

Q. To follow that with the obvious question, you know what I am going to ask. So if you have a lead in the ninth, how do you close a game and when is the next time you can go to Helsley if you're able to extend your season?

OLIVER MARMOL: I mean, my hope is Miles closes this game out. And if he doesn't, we'll figure the rest out. Helsley won't be available today. He's going to play catch just like any other normal day. And he'll be available for us tomorrow, so that's the plan as of right now.

Q. You think through games after having managed them. I'm wondering how many times you thought through that ninth inning last night, and what is there to be done? We've asked you a lot about what's the line of when a player might be physically compromised, how you find that out and make a move quickly? We asked you that earlier in the season.

OLIVER MARMOL: You asking getting him out before the bomb at-bat?

Q. Yes. Or what are you looking for knowing that a player is physically compromised. If he says he's okay, you have to trust him as you've told us. So what do you look for that might be cause for concern and how do you then act?

OLIVER MARMOL: Listen, he was more erratic than we've seen this year. So you're constantly thinking is he okay. There's no communication that it wasn't. There's no pain. It was just a matter of being able to finish his pitches and locate. And at that point you trust your All Star closer, who's been really darn good for you all year to figure it out.

Could we have gone to Jack or anybody else, Pallante, after the second walk, absolutely. Absolutely could. And I can argue for doing it and not doing it. It didn't work, and that's the part that sucks. So at the end of the day, could we have taken him out earlier, sure. We trust that our All Star to figure it out.

Q. Your thought process in your lineup changes today.

OLIVER MARMOL: We like just right righty on Nola. And are we sacrificing defense with Carlson not being in there, absolutely. We've done it all year where we've picked off defense at times, and we've won our fair share of games. So we'll treat this no different. If we go down because of it, see you guys next year.

Q. Ollie, how do you all manage Jack's workload? Obviously he gets hot in that game. He's not used to coming out of the bullpen. How do you see him today and tomorrow?

OLIVER MARMOL: I see him being available today and tomorrow depending what goes down today. There's a chance he sees some innings today. We'll see how the game plays out, but he'll be available.

Q. You saw one good swing from Juan Yepez. What did you see from him collectively over the last few weeks that makes you confident, righty rightly. He is not overly splitty. What did you see in him specifically?

OLIVER MARMOL: He's not, to your point, overly splitty. I'm being honest. There's a lot of ground balls pull side that we didn't love. There was some adjustments that he was making. We saw a solid swing to the right side of the field line drive for a run late in the game during the regular season. But man, the kid can stomach the situation. He's built for it. We like the right on right match up, and we're going to take our shot with him.

Q. Inasmuch as you're presuming there will be a third game, who are the candidates to start that game?

OLIVER MARMOL: It depends on who we don't use today. All hands on deck, like we mentioned earlier. If the game lines up for us to use a couple of those guys and the guy we don't use, we'll start tomorrow and we'll mix and match and figure it all out, but it doesn't matter unless we've won today.

Q. And one more. How hard is it to have an 11 man staff all of a sudden?

OLIVER MARMOL: I mean, you just embrace the fact that it's going to be tough. Tonight's not going to be easy. We're up for the challenge. It'll be a fun one. Losing yesterday didn't feel real good. That group is motivated. I'll tell you that.

Q. What do you look from Mikolas to know that he's going to be having a good day or a tougher day?

OLIVER MARMOL: Yeah. The game will tell you. It really will. His ability to throw any pitch in any count and feel comfortable having his mix and just pounded the zone with that mix. If you're able to eliminate several pitches with him because he's not in the zone with it, that's when you know it's going to be tougher for him to navigate a lineup. So as long as he's able to locate his pitches, we should be in good shape.

Q. You touched on it just a second ago, but your confidence in your team's ability with the leaders to flush what happened last night or even use it as fuel for today, just the confidence they can put that behind them. It was a crazy ending there, but not let that linger over into the next game?

OLIVER MARMOL: I have a ton of confidence. I wish this game started at 9:00 this morning. I wish we played a double header, actually, yesterday. But, no, this group is motivated. We know what's at stake, man. And when you think about the guys that are in that clubhouse, they've experienced this before. That group of leaders, in Yadi and Waino and Albert, I mean you go down that list and it's just a lot of just real competitors. There's guys that embrace competition in the tough part of this game, and last night wasn't short of that. So we look forward to today.

Q. Ollie, you talked last night you had 108 off the bat. You had 103 one time. You hit a lot of balls hard. How much of it is it a matter to manufacture runs and string singles together?

OLIVER MARMOL: I'll take -- I hear you. Yes. I'd love to single them to death, if that's what it takes tonight. But we've done a pretty good job of driving the baseball, hitting it hard and hitting our share of doubles and homers, and it's played well for us. So that first time to do the lineup, I thought we took a really good approach on Wheeler. He pitched a nice game. He's a good competitor. We respect him a ton. We had a lot of hard contact. That ball that Albert hit, I believe it was 108. I'll take that any day. The one that Nolan hit, usually it's a souvenir. So we took good swings. It didn't work out.

Q. I know you've talked about this before, but you're not one for big speeches or motivating speeches. Does that kind of stick true? I know you mentioned the veterans who have that naturally inside the clubhouse.

OLIVER MARMOL: If you need to be motivated for this game, then you don't belong in that clubhouse. There will be no speech. We're ready to play. Yeah.