NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DIAMONDBACKS VS PHILLIES

October 17, 2023

Torey Lovullo

Citizens Bank Park

Arizona Diamondbacks

Postgame 2 Press Conference

Phillies 10, Diamondbacks 0

THE MODERATOR: We'll get started with Torey Lovullo.

Q. What did you see from Merrill tonight?

TOREY LOVULLO: Actually I thought he threw the ball okay. You know, he gave up three home runs up to the point where I had taken him out of the game. It was right around that 90-pitch mark. He was doing all he could to keep us in the game.

It was just we couldn't get anything going offensively. I felt like we were putting a lot of pressure on him to keep it where it was, to give us a chance. And we never really -- the game had no flow to it, but I thought Merrill did a pretty good job of standing back out there and keeping us in the ball game.

Q. I think Merrill had something, like, 70, 75 pitches, something like that, when you decided to take him out. I'm sure that that decision is going to be second-guessed. Can you take me through your decision-making in that moment?

TOREY LOVULLO: Yeah, I felt like 3-0 -- I thought that Joe Mantiply has been throwing the ball real good. It's a great matchup. All the information that I have and everything that's showing me statistically that Joe is going to get under a barrel, and we're going to get back in the dugout down 3-0.

There is no crystal ball, right? I wish there was. I'll be second-guessing myself too. That's what we do. You just don't know that side of the puzzle. I think it was more -- it was closer to 90 pitches, and I just felt like I was selling out to the Stott-Mantiply matchup that we targeted as a very, very positive one as coming out on our side.

He hit it to the right spot. It's a base hit. I'm not complaining about the base hit. It was a clean base hit. He did his job and then handed it off to the next guy. That's where that momentum got pushed over the edge. It was four runs and it was 7-0, two batters later.

Look, we could be playing on the moon. Everybody is talking about coming into this environment, and I don't care. We have to play better baseball. Everybody has to be better. You can start with the manager and then trickle all the way down through the entire team.

We've got to play Diamondback baseball. What we watched out there was not anything that we have done for a long period of time. So we've got to regroup. We have to regroup the troops and find a way to get it done.

Q. What did you make of the offensive struggles tonight? It felt like maybe the at-bat quality was down from last night?

TOREY LOVULLO: Yeah, I believe in our offense, and I said it last night. Even though their starting pitcher last night and tonight, they were both outstanding, to get to where we have to go, we have to find a way to beat these guys.

If we get back around, they're going to throw it more times. I just felt like we were missing some pitches that were drivable. We were into some early count outs, and we got pitched to today. He was sequencing his pitches and keeping us off balance all day long.

We had a plan. We definitely had a plan against him, but he made pitches, and we couldn't counter.

Q. You said that's not Diamondback baseball. What is Diamondback baseball and how do you get back to it?

TOREY LOVULLO: Yeah, Diamondback baseball is grinding out at-bats, having mature at-bats, driving up pitch counts, catching pop-ups, picking up the baseball. You know, the pitching and defense goes hand in hand, and we find a way to score five runs or more and win a baseball game by just being a really smart, stubborn baseball team in all areas.

Q. Before the game really got out of control there, you had a few guys on base in the first, fourth, and sixth. In those situations, do you need the long ball like you did in the first couple of rounds, or can you try to force the action with your speed game?

TOREY LOVULLO: Yeah, I think there's a combination of a couple of things that we can do, and it just depends on where we're at in the lineup. It depends on who is on the bases, but they've been winning these games because they've been slugging. We have not been slugging the baseball.

So, yeah, I like slugging. I love slug, and this team can slug, and that gets back to a little bit of what I just mentioned to Nick. We have to be stubborn and not miss the pitch we're looking for or wait for the pitch that we're looking for.

So that's part of having a mature at-bat, and we can slug. We've got to find out how to beat you, and we can do it in a couple of different ways, but obviously slugging is one key way to do it.

Q. Speaking of finding different ways to scratch across runs. Once again first inning, Corbin gets on, doesn't go. Is there anything Nola was doing to keep him there?

TOREY LOVULLO: Yeah, yes and no. He was slide-stepping every pitch to keep him there, and a little bit of what we talked about last night.

I didn't want to run into an out. I want to be aggressive. It's definitely in our DNA, and we know how to do it. But he was slide-stepping the majority of the time.

We felt like when he does that, his stuff ticks down a little bit, but he was making quality pitches. We were looking to take advantage of it from an offensive standpoint, knowing when we had somebody standing at first base, if it does tick down, that we can potentially get back into that slugging mentality, but we did not.

Q. You mentioned the offensive game plan. What was the game plan against Nola for what you needed to do to limit his effectiveness?

TOREY LOVULLO: I would rather not talk about it because we'll probably see him again. He just looked like he was one step ahead of us today. We have to be a little bit better.

Q. Just following up on the slug comment, teams that have out-homered their opponent are 17-2 now in the postseason. Do you feel like you have to out-homer them to win the series, or do you think you can scratch across?

TOREY LOVULLO: Obviously with you making that statement, I will definitely agree with you. It's like having a team full of three-pointers, right, against somebody that can only shoot twos.

It happens quick, and it builds up quickly, but we're built to beat you in a lot of different ways. We're built to compete every single night in a lot of different ways.

So whatever recipe we can order up, we're going to try and find a way. When it's working very well in every area as we have seen through the course of the postseason, minus these two games, we can out-point you or out-slug you. It just hasn't been working either way.

Q. I know that infield pop-up dropped there in the seventh inning, what did you see there, and do you feel like you guys maybe lost focus a little bit just given the circumstances of the game at the end?

TOREY LOVULLO: I don't think we've done that all year. I don't think we've had a situation like that all year, so I think our competitive focus -- and those are things that I've been talking about this past month -- was lacking. We've got to catch that pop-up. That's baseball 101, and that is absolutely more than unacceptable to me.