AL DIVISION SERIES: RED SOX v INDIANS

October 5, 1999

Mike Hargrove

A. Charles Nagy will start Game 2.

A. It's possible. Bartolo has been awfully good for us the second half of this year. He's been very consistent with what he has thrown and has kept our ball club in the games he started. So right now Bartolo is as close as we come to number one. I can't sit here today and tell you he is a number one because I think that has to be established and Bartolo I think is in the process of doing that but it's still work unfinished.

A. Well, he obviously adds a lot as far as physical talent is concerned but he also brings a very unique professionalism to our ball club. Harold, when you talk to players, players will tell you that they would just as soon nobody ever know how they are doing by how they are acting, whether or not they are doing real good or doing real bad by how they are talking. Harold Baines comes as close as anybody I ever seen. You really don't know how he is going. He is always on an even keel, I don't want to say mild mannered but very consistent in his approach, and so he brings a lot of that to this ball club and that's why our younger players see that. Bringing Harold here, with Cordero and Fryman hurt, we weren't sure how they were going to recover or if they were going to recover or if they'd be ready for the post-season. So we had the chance to add Harold Baines and you just don't find .300 hitters drive in 100 runs and hit, you know, hit over 25 home runs a year, you don't find them around very often and we were happy to make that deal. So it's just, not necessarily a precautionary measure but it sure fit that way also.

A. I can't put my finger on any one pitcher, any one outing that turned Bartolo's season around. I think that if you go back and look, you'll see that the second half for Bartolo has been much more consistent in getting his breaking ball and his change-up over for strikes than he was in the first half and if you're asking me a reason, I would say that is the reason. But I can't point to anyone that would say after the third pitch of his 15th start, this is when he took off.

A. I had not talked to the players involved and who is on the roster and who is not on the roster. I will not do that. I mean, I will not make anything public until I have a chance to talk to the people involved. I think I owe them that and we're not ready, we're not ready to do that yet. So I can't comment one way or the other on that report. I didn't see that report.

Q. It was on the radio.

A. It's tough to see things on the radio.

A. No. I think since we clinched it, I think we played as well as we could have played, you know, given the fact that we had people injured, trying to give people a rest. I think we walked a real fine line thereafter. We clinched it in trying to get the people the needed rest and still play, play for home field advantage. We took it right down to the wire. We just weren't able to get it done the last three days and then the last day of the season was really just a chance. We wanted to win the game. I've never been with a club that ever took the field and didn't try to win that day. But Sunday for us was a day to try to get tuned up and mentally geared for the playoffs. So I'm not concerned about the playoffs because of the way we played after we clinched because I feel we played fairly well. I don't think we played poorly as a whole. But, you know, there's other things I'm concerned about.

Q. After beating the Red Sox a year ago, aside from the obvious, are they different in any way and are they better?

A. Well, I think Cormier makes a big difference in their ball club. I think he brings to them something they really haven't had. And obviously Garces has, as he seems to every year. Pedro is Pedro. I think if you look at those three kids, they have surprises. And there's a number of guys that have stepped in and done a tremendous job to allow them to, you know, get to the point they've gotten, and I don't think that you can minimize the job that Jimy Williams has done in keeping that team focused and stay on the straight and narrow. Jimy has done a great job in that respect.

A. We'd probably be in the dump without Einar. We left Einar off the roster and coming into the '98 season he was available to a lot of clubs and nobody picked him up. We looked at Einar as a backup catcher, brought him in as a backup catcher and he blossomed into a front line catcher. I think Rodriguez is the only one in the league that throws any better than he does. He has hit in the .275 range for us all year long, has good speed for a catcher, very durable, you know, and came through for us at a time we knew Alomar went down, which we thought was only going to be a relatively minor injury and turned out to be 124 games. He came up big for us, he did a nice job and developed as he went and turned into a very good catcher.

A. I'm comfortable. I'm not as comfortable as I would be if they were 100 percent healthy. I think that both of those men would tell you that they are not 100 percent and I don't think that we ever held out any hope that they would be this year. I think really you have to wait until we go into next year's spring training before that will happen. I think that I like our chances with them in the lineup. I'm glad they're there and I'm comfortable with them being in our lineup because they are big league players and we are a better ball club even if they are 85 or 90 percent healthy as opposed to somebody else.

A. Obviously the alternative is pretty darn good. In a lot of respects it is not difficult. In other respects it is extremely difficult because here is a kid that has come through for us this year after everybody was hurt and hit over 30 home runs. I was looking in spring training trying to figure out how I was going to get him at bats. So it's hard in that regard and it doesn't seem fair, but I don't know anything in life or in baseball that has been fair. The alternative is Harold Baines and David Justice and those are very, very good alternatives and that makes the decision a lot easier.

A. I don't know that there is a rivalry. I know that they're both very historically rich clubs and so I think that plays well. I think obviously playing them in the playoffs the last three years may lend a little truth to that theory. But I don't get any sense of a rivalry. We want to beat them very badly and they want to beat us badly. I think both ball clubs do a good job on the field. So I don't know that it's a rivalry stage yet.

A. No.