NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: METS v BRAVES

October 14, 1999

Bobby Valentine

BOBBY VALENTINE: You know, I think I said this a couple of times now. I think when you have really good ability and you're pitching in an important game, that ability comes out. And Al is a real talented guy. He also wants it. He enjoys the limelight. He doesn't mind answering questions. He doesn't mind being put in the situation to be the guy responsible. So he's there, and he does a good job at it, very good job.

BOBBY VALENTINE: As long as there's a large enough number. And being Mike is going to be here for a while, and we're going to be a good team for a while. I think it will get quite large. If we deal with large numbers, they will all equal and even out. Mike's a fabulous baseball player, a great hitter, and I think he's going to get real hot.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Well, I think it's a little tough to decipher between flu and what everyone is feeling after getting in at 3:00 in the morning. But no one really complained today. Ricky felt better. "Not great," he said, but he felt better. He wasn't having those migraines or feeling like he had to vomit; so I guess that's good news. And he should be okay for tomorrow, and as I said, it seemed like Dennis Cook was a little under the weather, but he's the only one.

BOBBY VALENTINE: How many Met fans has he met? That's kind of interesting. I don't know about haunting. He's another one with really good ability. When you can throw 96 and throw it where you want it and have a hook like he has, I guess it's easy to make any comment you want to make.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Yeah, he's in the training room as we speak, and his ankle is getting treatment. So it's not 100 percent right now. Right now, our rotation is for 3, 4, and we'll see how he feels before we make that decision.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I wasn't up all night, no. I slept on the couch here, as a matter of fact. Just one of those things. You make thousands of decisions. When Rickey came out, when I put in Melvin Mora, if he happened to strike out a couple of times, and Benny was on the bench, it would have been one of those things where I would have said: "I should have put Benny in." Melvin did a good job. Kenny is the same thing. If Kenny got a ground ball doubleplay there and we come in that inning 2-2, it would have been the next inning. So that's the way the game goes. When you leave a guy -- when you have a crossroads and you leave a guy in and he gives up a homer, then it was the wrong decision, I think. That's usually the way it works.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I thought he pitched fine. He kept us in the game. Made a couple of pitches up on his own; one to Boone that he hit up the middle in the first inning, and one to Weiss that he hit down the right field line. Other than that, he made good pitches, and that's all we ask our guys to do, go out and give their best. His best was pretty good that day.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I don't know. I don't know if it's bad or good. Good series or bad series, I don't know if they really get rated that way. I don't really care about it evening out. I just care about how the players play. In two games, bringing in Smoltz is really high-risk. I guess it's not that high-risk, if he feels good. But it's high-risk if it doesn't work, because he hasn't relieved. When he feels good and he's throwing like that, then it works out perfectly.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Again, it's two games; so it's hard for me to really put a finger on it. I thought that Mike just missed a couple of pitches yesterday. I thought that John hit -- the entire defense shifted around; he hit a bullet over the bag at first that Hunter somehow was playing on the line to catch; had a line drive to center with two strikes that Andruw came in and caught. I thought Robin's swings, even though there wasn't a lot to show for it, he was right on a couple of those pitches. I don't know that the swings or the approach of their pitching has been dominant one way or another. The results have definitely been less than we prefer.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Well, I don't think we fear anything. I think lack of fear sometimes is defined as confidence. But it's not an enviable situation. I'm sure if we had our druthers, we'd have the 2 on the other side of the ledger. But we're going to come out and play our game tomorrow. Al is going to be out in the middle of the diamond. And if we get a couple of breaks and a couple of hits and score some more runs than they do, then it's 2-1, instead of 2-0.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Well, yesterday, we weren't trailing for much of the game. We had a lead for about 6 innings. I don't know if we had that mindset.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I think after a wait, a long wait, I think the fans are going to be excited. And I think that they deserve to be in this situation of excitement. I think the weather is going to be decent for us. So the house should be rocking.

BOBBY VALENTINE: You know, the home field advantage really is that you bat last. When you have the added excitement of a playoff game, I think there might be some added home field advantage. So will it help? It sure as heck shouldn't hurt. I'm counting on it.

BOBBY VALENTINE: I don't really feel that. Trying to get an answer for that is difficult. We've played a lot and haven't been that successful. It seemed every inning we played, we had a chance to win the game and win the inning. It's been frustrating. No doubt about that. They beat us 16-0, we didn't have a chance in any of those innings, of winning a game. But for me, I think those things even out eventually. And I think that balls that hit the foul pole, miss the foul pole, it turns around after a while, if you keep playing tough. We lost the lead yesterday, then the 8th inning we're battling, and the last inning we come up with one swing to tie the game again. So it's not like there's a defeatist attitude or an attitude that we feel that we're up against something -- an immovable object. But we've been moving for a while, and it's moving very slowly.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Sounds like it hasn't turned yet for me. If you watch the games, it's what it looks like. The Diamondbacks beat us 7 out 69, and in a game there, in Game 1 when it was 4-4, things turned. After we left the bases loaded, we hit one over the fence. And we haven't had that turn in these series yet, but when it does turn, I think it starts turning in the right direction, and sometimes that motion is then an unstoppable motion.

BOBBY VALENTINE: God if I know. It's similar to Tom's question about Mike's at-bats in the playoffs. I don't know how many at-bats he needs and how many games he needs to catch up or to right the course. And I'm not sure how many we need. But one thing I know if you watch it enough, follow any sport enough, right now, we need four-out-of-five, and that kind of streak is in our favor.

BOBBY VALENTINE: Mickey did, yeah. Mickey Brantley did, yeah.

BOBBY VALENTINE: We understand the mindset, and it just was maybe something that could have been done later in the game. Maybe a better situation is one out than no outs. It was a good intention. It wasn't like trying to throw the game or anything. It was well intended. Just probably wasn't -- it was just a little surprising. It would have been good if they were surprised instead of me being surprised, that's for sure.

BOBBY VALENTINE: There's no way to tell. Al is going to be starting the game. So quicker or slower, just have to see how that plays out.