THE MODERATOR: Mike Scioscia is here. We'll take a question for him.
Q. Coach, how tough was it being down 6-0 after two innings?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Well, it was tough. We battled back. Actually, you look at the final score, it was a whooping, no doubt about that. But the opportunity in the middle of the game for us to get back in it was there. I think that's a credit to our guys not giving up, after being down 6-0. We felt good about that, obviously. That's a flat-out whooping. You can't really put it into any more words. As Dusty said a couple days ago, I hope maybe those guys swung themselves out a little bit. We'll see how Game 6 moves along.
Q. Is it possible, especially early on, that some of your pitchers are so preoccupied with Bonds they're not paying enough attention to guys in front of him?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: I don't think so. I think those guys are swinging the bats. It's been a little point of concern for us in all the playoffs, our starters maybe not pitching deep enough or effectively enough in a game. Tonight they went out and jumped on Jarrod. There's no two ways about it. It was more than just Barry, obviously. It's something we'll need, two solid starts for us to get to be where we want to be.
Q. In the course of a regular season, a manager sometimes allows a game to get away because he just doesn't have the pitchers. He has to look forward to the next game. Did that fall into the equation for you tonight?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: I think we got along those lines once the game started to get a little bit out of hand. There was no use to see Francisco in that game, no use to see Percy in that game. Even Schoeny, to a certain extent. We wanted to obviously -- in the middle innings we were in the game. That's where you saw Donnelly, Weber come in. We thought we had a chance to get back into that game. Unfortunately, it went the other way with us. But it's tough to play a guy like Shields, he's been doing a great job, being a rookie, stay out there and get knocked around a little bit. But we didn't really have options at that time.
Q. When you put in Donnelly, did you consider a double-switch so his turn at bat wouldn't come that quickly?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: We wanted to limit him to one inning. We felt that we had Brendan in a shorter span today, Web was fresh. We wanted one inning and moving on from there.
Q. Can you talk about Jarrod again? He gave up four walks in the first inning, three in a row. He looked a little bit shaky out there. What was going on with him, do you think?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: I can tell you one thing about Jarrod, he wasn't nervous. This guy is as cool as they come. He's an incredible competitor. Those guys put some real good at-bats on him. They laid out some pitches. He wasn't able to get the ball in the zones he wanted to early in the game. You pay a price for it. He bounced back after the first couple innings, and pitched well. But by then it was 6-zip and we were definitely swimming upstream from there.
Q. Was walking Bonds in the first a consideration?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: Yeah. What we were looking at, what I was looking at, was I felt good with Jarrod going after Barry, giving him the freedom to pitch a little bit. I think Jarrod, if you give him the opportunity to pitch and make some pitches to hitters, then he usually responds. Obviously, he didn't want to give in to Barry, took a little off, took a little off a fastball trying to get it down to get a ground ball. Barry stayed on it and drove in the rightfield corner. That's a good piece of hitting. Especially with the matchups with Benito and Reggie behind him, I felt good giving Wash a little leeway. If he happened to make some pitches and just miss with them, we would have moved on and taken our chances. He made some decent pitches, Barry laid off them. Good piece of hitting to stay on that off-speed pitch that he hit in the rightfield corner.
Q. You're faced with an elimination game on Saturday. Does your approach change? Do you look at it the same way you would look at a Game 7 where everybody's available?
MIKE SCIOSCIA: We're going to get everybody that's physically able, definitely, on the pitching side, to be available. We have to chew this thing one game at a time. You still have to look forward, if you get by Game 6, where you're going to go in Game 7, obviously. But I think it's a no-brainer, we'll look to get as many guys available on Saturday as we can, in case we do have to go to the pen early, we'll have that option, and make sure we have the coverage we need. We should be able to do that. I think we'll have enough guys to have some options if Kevin gets off to a rough start.
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