MLB WORLD SERIES: DIAMONDBACKS VS RANGERS

October 30, 2023

Torey Lovullo

Chase Field

Arizona Diamondbacks

Pregame 3 Press Conference

Q. When you look back at where you were two years ago, three years ago, did it hit you at all driving to the ballpark today that there's a World Series game being hosted here at Chase?

TOREY LOVULLO: A little bit. It hits me the same way every time I think about it. And it wasn't limited to the drive today.

I am grateful and appreciative of everything that this organization did for me through those dark times. I could have been fired on the spot after losing 110 games as the manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks. But they believed in me, and it makes me extremely motivated to go out every single day to do the best that I can for this organization.

I do have to pinch myself every once in a while. I was up super early this morning. I couldn't sleep, for the obvious reasons. And it was centered around the excitement of walking into the stadium today and being in front of these fans and saying we're in Game 3 of a World Series and we're trying to do our best to win a game for them, for us, this whole community, this whole state. And I'm very proud of that.

Q. There's a note that the roof is going to be opened tonight. And through the years the roof has been a point of contention for some pitchers. Do you prefer it that way, and does the ballpark play any differently with the roof open, to you?

TOREY LOVULLO: I know some have said when it's open the ball carries a little bit more. As long as we know the landscape when we walk into the ballpark and nothing changes and no fast punches being thrown, whether we're at home or on the road, I'm fine with it.

I look at a lot of park-adjusted numbers, especially for balls that are hit in certain areas of this ballpark, and I know it does not carry well, from gap to gap, in the middle of the diamond. Even when it's open, it plays legit.

So it doesn't matter to me. And as long as both teams know and it's the same playing field, we're going to go out there and get it done.

Q. What's impressed you most about Gabby Moreno during this run, considering how young he is and his first full season in the big leagues?

TOREY LOVULLO: His heartbeat, his ability to emotionally stay at one level, despite any type of circumstance. And those are the things that I get to see.

The common denominator for what you guys watching the game and what I get to see from watching the game is that he's a really good baseball player, and he knows what he's trying to do every single pitch when he's at the plate, and he knows what he's trying to get to with his pitchers every single pitch.

To me, that's maturity. And it's taking its course this year. When he first got here I'm sure it was a little overwhelming. We have a lot of concepts. Every team does. We're not reinventing the wheel here.

Everybody does the same thing, and it took him a little while to get our concepts down. Since midseason -- he got banged up a little bit -- but since midseason things started to really come into place for him.

But things that stand out for me is more his emotional stability every single night.

Q. I wanted to ask about Dave McKay. What has his experience this time of year and the number of times he's been in the postseason, how has that helped you? And how has his expertise given, what, decades as a first base coach helped your stolen base efficiency?

TOREY LOVULLO: I've been around a lot of great coaches. I've had a lot of unbelievable coaches, as a manager. And he is, hands down, the best coach that I've ever been around for a thousand reasons, a couple I'll get a chance to talk about right now.

His experience when it comes to postseason baseball, things leading up to postseason baseball, the grind of losing streaks during the middle of a season, the readiness of what he's trying to get the players to get to in Spring Training. He always has a really, really distinct, very pointed message.

It's not always the same message. It's a very well-timed, very well-thought-out message for what will help these players peek around the corner and make sure they're ready to go.

And I give him that platform. He always runs it by me. I've never said no to him. So every time we meet with the players in our pregame advanced meeting, he will drive home some very, very important messages about this ballclub, and what we can do to go out and compete.

When it comes to his stolen-base record, you know, it makes my life so easy because all I have to do is put the red light on green light on. And that's really the signs I'm giving. There's some nonverbal communication between he and I. And he takes it from there.

But there's a preparedness and a system that he has that everybody knows and respects, and you'll see him starting probably about right now walking around with his iPad and telling everybody, this is what's going on, heads up, and this is where we're going to exploit certain things in certain ways.

He doesn't let up on that. It could be a day game in Detroit or it could be Game 2, Game 3 of the World Series, he's going to be the same guy every single day.

Q. What's impresses you most about Marte and Perdomo this year, the middle infielders, especially Perdomo, he's taken over at shortstop this whole year and doing a great job?

TOREY LOVULLO: We wouldn't be in this position if it wasn't for both of those players, in particular Perdomo, who stepped in in a situation where we had to everyday shortstops with he and Nick Ahmed. Once we moved on from Nick, Perdomo's really has taken off.

I'm reminded of their ability to execute. If you look at the ground-ball double play they turned with Nelson, lefty Nelson pitching in Texas, I think it was in the bottom of the 10th inning, watch that play. That will tell you about their skill set. And I don't need to say anything else.

These kids get after it, defensively. They're simpatico. They know where each other is without even saying anything. And they're just great teammates.

Offensively, Ketel has been extremely consistent all year long. We count on him doing different things but Perdomo has been rising and has had critical at-bats this year that's helped us win some games.

Q. There's a bit of a groundswell on social media to give Christian Walker the Trea Turner treatment to help get him going. With or without the bat coming around, can you just speak to how important Christian has been on and off the field, accountability, playing defense, all of that?

TOREY LOVULLO: Yeah, he's everything we want from an Arizona Diamondback. He holds himself accountable. He holds his teammates accountable. He works as hard as anybody that you see out there. And, example, doesn't miss a day of ground balls -- despite being known as somebody who can hit three home runs and drive in 104 or 105 runs. He wants to be a complete baseball player. That means a lot to this organization.

I know that he's been grinding offensively. I feel like there were a couple of really good at-bats in Game 2 that let me to think when it's his turn he's going to get hot and he's going to carry this ballclub.

And we've seen that at times. But every once in a while you've got to hand it off. Somebody else has to drive the bus. And some of the boys around him have been driving the bus. And we'll wait for them offensively to get that thing moving.

Look at the hands play he made with the ball on the bag. It was just a reaction play. Didn't surprise me, been doing it all year long. You can't throw a ball behind him. He picks everything at first base. That's a product of the hard work and the belief that he's going to get the job done.

Q. What's your plans for Game 4? In the Philly series you started Mantiply. Obviously Schwarber, Harper are left-handed batters top of the lineup. Here you have Seager but Texas is pretty predominantly right-handed. Do you think going with a right-handed opener or what do you do?

TOREY LOVULLO: Don't forget about Carter. He's a really good player, too. He's definitely on our radar.

I don't know that answer. We've got to figure that out. I want to see what their last several left-handed -- facing left-handed-pitcher lineups have looked like. But I'll probably do that at some point tonight after the game.

I don't know what that answer is. But we have a couple of bulk guys we know of in our bullpen. And Don Drysdale is not going to fall out of the sky. It's definitely going to be somebody in our bullpen that's going to start the day tomorrow. Who it is and where it is depends on where we get through tonight.

Q. No John Smoltz either?

TOREY LOVULLO: He's around. I might ask him. Good splitter.

Q. On Pfaadt, we ask you this over and over again, what's the leash on him? Are you going to maybe let them go a little longer?

TOREY LOVULLO: We've got to win a baseball game today. If we're in position to win I'll be all in on that. I'll read and react. I know it's worked, and I keep saying it -- 18, plus or minus four, and we'll see how the game is going.

But it's a pivotal game. We know we've got to go out play our finest game. If we do and we're in a spot to win, I'm going to go all in and we'll worry about tomorrow tomorrow.

Q. Going back to 2001, you remember watching the World Series, you watched Game 7? I know you were working in Cleveland, but I don't remember where you were living.

TOREY LOVULLO: I was living in Southern California. And believe it or not I was at a Lakers game. I was just watching some updates.

I don't remember, you didn't get -- cell phones were just starting out at that time. You don't have it on your phone. There were updates in and around me. I don't know who was getting them or how they were getting them.

I remember the guy in back of me saying the D-backs have a chance. They're down by one. I said, what inning is it? He said, the ninth. And I said, they do have no chance; you're wrong, because Mariano Rivera is going to be in this game.

Then 20 minutes later somebody stood up and said the D-backs just won the World Series. So that's my memory of it. And I know it was an exciting time for everybody here in the valley.

I do remember coming here as a coach for the Arizona fall league a couple years after that and they were still talking about how exciting that was.

Back to the question, that's us, that's us right now. And it feels really good. Feels really good that we're having that impact on this community.

Q. Looking back at a 2002 version of yourself in Georgia, what were the aspects of managing you were most unaware of back then? And over the 20-something years how has the job, aside from you, changed?

TOREY LOVULLO: You ask really good questions. You ask good, deep questions. Give me some time to think about it. (Laughter).

Yeah, this right here, this throws me off. I'm sitting in front of you guys before a world championship series. And sitting in front of a group of really smart journalists is not easy and trying not to sound like a fool is hard for me.

But yeah, so the preparedness, I would say. Dealing with this size of it, of course, is the obvious one. But I probably didn't have my baseball clock on for the first several years, starting in 2002, in Columbus, Georgia. I would get thrown off by something that would happen an inning or two ahead.

I used to get mad at myself going to bed that night for feeling like I was unprepared and letting the team down because I wasn't able to project the game ahead as far as I needed to.

So I got on this quest early in my managerial career to ask questions of managers that would actually sit and talk to me about what their philosophy is. And some managers were two or three innings ahead. Some were thinking about the ninth inning in the first inning.

I had to find out what my range was, where I had to go about how forward I had to be when I was thinking about the game.

I've been the same guy, believe it or not. You could probably go back and ask the players on that team if I was a relationship guy, tried to connect players, tried to connect the team.

So that didn't change a lot, but there were so many experiences I had inside of the baseball world, baseball game, that you couldn't prepare yourself for.

So I wouldn't trade the 10 years in player development for anything. Not one day of it. Of course, I wish I was in the big leagues as a staff member. But my daughter asked me the same question yesterday. She said, was it worth every bus ride, every tough moment now that you're sitting here in this situation? I said, 100 percent, yes. I would not trade it for the world.