AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: INDIANS v YANKEES

October 11, 1998

Mike Hargrove

MIKE HARGROVE: I felt in talking to him that he could have played. Chose to go with a right hander in the lineup and just based on the fact that he was hit in the forearm the night before and the fact that he wasn't feeling really comfortable with left-handed pitching right now, that's the reason we changed.

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, we've got to win two more. Going to New York, we have to win two. It's going to be tough. We understand that and we understood that coming into the series was going to be tough. The Yankees have a very good ball club as I've said 1,000 times. You don't win 114 games in a season by being lucky. These guys are good. We played them pretty evenly for the most part and we've got to put it on the line two more times, hopefully and play two tough games in New York.

MIKE HARGROVE: Briefly, I did, but Mark has got power in all field. Mark is a switch hitter, better hitter as a designated hitter. Knowing where we were in the lineup with Diaz, Wilson and Sexson coming up in the 9th inning, knowing we were going to be facing -- I felt like -- it gave us a better chance to go the way we did.

MIKE HARGROVE: What do you want me to say? I don't understand the question.

MIKE HARGROVE: Jaret pitched well. His two previous starts in the postseason against Boston and against the Yankees, they weren't what we've come to expect out of Jaret and so consequently, went with a more experienced pitcher in Ogea. Chad didn't go very far tonight. We had Jaret, there was some things that Mark Wiley worked on in the bullpen with Jaret. Velocity was good, threw some nice change ups, the one that really went back was the Chili Davis one that went out of the ballpark. On the whole, Jaret threw well, so that was nice to see.

MIKE HARGROVE: In the pregame press conference, I said he would be available in an emergency and he was available, so, yeah, we would have used him had we tied.

MIKE HARGROVE: I don't know if demoralizing was the word. It didn't get us down, we were still up and we felt like we still have a chance and still played hard. I think we proved that the way we came back in our half of the first. The ground ball that O'Neill hit back through the middle to Ogea, that ball -- whether that ball is caught or let go, it's a double play. Those are the breaks of the game. It's not something that I'm going to sit here and cry about that. Those things happen. That was probably as gut wrenching as anything, knowing that it was a fairly routine double play ball that -- it wasn't handled.

MIKE HARGROVE: No. I base it on good information. I based the decision the way I thought it was right. I would have second guessed myself more given what Jaret hit his previous two starts had I started him and what happened happened. So, no, I don't think there's a second guess there, you may disagree with that, but I don't think there is.

MIKE HARGROVE: Obviously, it's not thrilling, we're not jumping up-and-down for joy at the way we pitched in the first inning. We dug ourselves a hole fairly often this postseason, as you say, in the first inning. We've been able to come back from that, but it's not the ideal way you want to come into the ball game.

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, it does to a certain extent. But it depends on how bad the damage is that early in the ball game, there's still a lot you can do. If that holds true through the 5th, 6, 7th innings, then it limits --

MIKE HARGROVE: There you go. I wrote your column for you. Yeah, you're right. It does. When you win, when you're ahead like that, it's a lot easier to be aggressive, easier to come back from mistakes.

MIKE HARGROVE: I didn't think so, but I think that it's a real testimony to his ability that he was able to pitch as deep as he did into the game and to limit a very good ball club to three runs. I didn't get -- at least, I tip my hat to David. He showed, yeah, Joe's got a lot of confidence in him. It didn't look like he had command of his pitches like he has had in the past, but he still went out and did what good pitchers do and found a way to keep his team in the ball game and pitched to win.

MIKE HARGROVE: If I had known that Mark Whiten was going to hit a double play, I'd have given the take sign. Yeah, you want your big guns to come up in those spots and with one out and the runners we had where they were, you're looking to them, but you're also looking to Mark Whiten to drive the ball, too. It's not the ability to do the same thing, maybe not on a regular basis.

MIKE HARGROVE: No, I like my ball club. Like I said, they've got a good ball club and pitching, defense, hitting, they play the game the way it is supposed to be played. Rarely do they blow it with your pitching or offense. That's what you look at when you see the Yankees play. Envious? I like my ball club. We've got a good ball club too and I think that we've proven that in this series and we've got two games to go. Anything can happen.

MIKE HARGROVE: I thought he started off the game crisp, locating his pitches where he wanted to. I felt like the double play ball by O'Neill kind of threw him off his game a little bit, not nearly as sharp after that. Overall, I've seen Chad better.

MIKE HARGROVE: I came straight down here. I haven't been -- I didn't go to the clubhouse to talk to them yet.

MIKE HARGROVE: Well, it's almost like these guys that think you're half full. It's not an ideal situation to be in the 5th game of the ALCS and have three rookies in the lineup. But I think it says a lot about the organization that we're able to put guys in there, that we feel confident that they can do the job. In a perfect world, that may not be the case as far as having them in the lineup, but I think that their organizations has done a tremendous effort to feel like we can play with them and be productive with them.

MIKE HARGROVE: You look at the game yesterday, 3 hits and 4 runs, a lot of the same thing. We did the same thing with lead off hitter, Knoblauch hit an 0-2 count and the thing of it is, good teams are economical with their hits. I mean, they sure -- they make them count when they get them if they're not getting a lot of them. Yankees continue to put themselves in a good position and take advantage of what's going on. Good teams do that. Ones that do it to your team, it hits home the fact that you can't afford to put base runners on base, good base runners on a good team on base and expect to get away with it time and time again. That's what happened again.