NL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS v BRAVES

October 9, 1999

Larry Dierker

LARRY DIERKER: Where they scored the five runs? We kicked the ball all over the place, made, I don't know, two, three errors in the inning. That was it. Maybe they get about two runs.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I have no way of quantifying things like that. That's my guess, is as good as yours. I mean, I didn't -- I didn't think that we played as well as we could or should, but then this has been the way we played for the last six weeks basically: One good game, two bad, one good, two bad. We really haven't played very well for a considerable length of time. This is very typical of what's been happening to us lately since we started playing infielders in the outfield and all that. We've been able to fight through it and get into the playoffs with it, but it hasn't been anything like last year's team where we had people playing the positions they are supposed to be playing and everyone healthy.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I think that just yesterday's game in general, the two bases loaded situations and then -- and then giving up the runs in the 12th or 13th, whatever inning it was probably more than anything not being able to score was the greatest frustration and the biggest turning point. I mean if we scored in any of those situations, we win the game. Today's game has a totally different flavor.

LARRY DIERKER: I'm not sure I heard any one of you but regarding the postseason, I'm sure if we get in next year, the stigma we came in with this year will come in even greater. I don't see any reason why that can't be turned around, but the hard thing is having to spend six more months to try to get back in again. That's the most frustrating thing about it. Sometimes a team will get in once and go all the way and in our case, we've been in three years in a row and we haven't made it past the first step. It's very frustrating. I think yesterday's game was more frustrating than this one. Obviously, we, you know, made enough of a comeback to get a little interested in the end but we never, you know, we never got that close against Rocker in the ninth. We got a runner, but he had some pretty good stuff. I didn't think Bagwell swung on strike three, but that's splitting hairs and there's no telling that he would have been able to get on base, even if he hadn't called it a swing. But I thought they had a lot of lucky hits. I don't know what you guys thought, but I thought they hit the ball very poorly for a team that had 14 or 15 hits. There were only about two or three that were hit very hard.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, you know one of our critical mistakes was underestimating him as a hitter. I don't know if Shane underestimated him or whether he made mistakes. Everybody knows he's a good hitter and his basehits made things very difficult. I mean, if you get the pitcher out, it's a little easier to turn around the top of the order. If you don't, you're asking for trouble. As a pitcher, I don't know what lies ahead for him. He still has his velocity but his arm dropped down. When my arm started dropping down, I started into the decline. I don't know if that will happen. That happened to me. After my arm started getting sore, I became a three-quarter pitcher and by the end I was a side arm pitcher. I don't know what will happen with him. Everybody is unique but he still has plenty of stuff to win with. I mean, I would be delighted myself if I could go back a few years and take the stuff he had today and take it into about 35 starts a year and make a lot of money with it. He was not easy to hit, but he clearly has dropped his arm position.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, I mean, it was kind of an exciting comeback because there was extra basehits that got the crowd going. If we had had one more runner on base in the 9th it really would have been exciting because I think that would have turned them loose. He was slowing toward homeplate. If he had had walked there and we had first and second, I think we would have had a run and tried to get second and third. It would have been a terrible way to end it, but it would have been a very exciting way. We never got that second runner on base. Caminiti was probably just a fraction of an inch from hitting another home-run on the last shot of the game. I mean, we at least made it entertaining for the fans that stayed around, but I don't know. I think the tension and the pressure was in yesterday's game. It was just, it was so great in yesterday's game that even with the comeback, I didn't have the same feeling myself. I don't know about the rest of the players. I didn't have the same feeling myself, even in the 9th inning, that I had yesterday when it was, you know, it was already tied and all you had to do was score a run and not just one but four, five innings in a row. That was a lot different than today. Today was, you know, it was a nice comeback, but it wasn't close enough to where you could taste it like yesterday.

LARRY DIERKER: The final game of the dome for me is a great pleasure. It's probably the greatest pleasure I could take in this playoff series knowing that we won't ever come back here and play any baseball games here. It was very exciting for me in the beginning. It was a wonderful baseball stadium when it still had the scoreboard, but its days are gone by and I think part of the frustration of what we have been through the last three years will be, at least, somewhat less, a little bit livened by the fact that we have the excitement of moving into a new park.

LARRY DIERKER: I didn't really. The only thing I have is here we go with you. You have some wonderful questions.

LARRY DIERKER: Well, he finished the season in a slump. He had a great year for us, but his year was very much a hot and cold situation. I mean, he would go times when he would go 15 for 20 with 10 extra basehits and he would also go times when he would go one for 30. I mean, he was just a very, very hot player when he gets hot and he could get in a slump where he doesn't even look like a major league hitter. Unfortunately, during the playoff series, he was in the slump phase. He had progress with us in the sense that last year he had a good year and his slump seemed to be a little bit longer and his streaks a little bit shorter than at other times during his career. He again made more progress this year in that regard, but he still had some terrible slumps and he finished the year in one. I didn't ever think about pinch-hitting for him, if that was part of the question.

LARRY DIERKER: You know the thing that bothered me I think more than anything is when the ball was hit back to him and he missed it and it started rolling over toward third base. To me the natural instinct of a game is go to chase that ball even when you can't get the out. He doesn't look like he wants to be out there, and I don't know if that's how he felt, but that was the kind of signal it sent to me.

LARRY DIERKER: I'm not that worried about that because I don't know what the outcome of our team is going to be next year. We have so many guys coming up for free agents and arbitration and all that. I think that we are going to be back to a planning phase and until I can see what the team is going to look like next year, to really know that I can worry about whether this same exact team is going to go into the playoffs again next year with the same guys and the same set of circumstances, I don't know what it's going to be like next year. So it's going to be hard to worry about it yet.

LARRY DIERKER: Yeah, I sure am. We've been here about 35 years or something. We've never been to the World Series. I keep saying I'm not going until we get in and I hope I can live long enough. I've never been in myself. Oftentimes, the new stadium, if you have a good team, it's the impetus it takes to get over the top and I hope it will be next year with us.

LARRY DIERKER: I thought last year was more difficult than this year because last year we had a better ballclub. Last year I thought we had the best team in the league come playoff team. We lost the short five game series. It turned out I thought the Braves were the second best team and the Padres beat them. I didn't think we were the best team in the playoffs. I thought we were the worst team in the playoffs in terms of people that we had available. We were playing a lot of rookies, and guys like Billy, we knew he had a sore elbow going in and we were just, you know, we -- a lot of guys who were playing are hurt, too. We just really would have been very improbable champions but because we had been a probable champion during the regular season, I thought maybe we can do it during the postseason, too, but it didn't work out.

LARRY DIERKER: We don't know what the effects of the new stadium is going to be. It's going to have a deep centerfield but it's going to have a shallow left field. We don't know how the ball is going to carry when we play off side. We don't know what the grass is going to be like, whether it's going to be fast or slow. I'm sure we are going to have a lot of work to do with the dirt areas to make sure that they are not too fast or slow and that the bounces are good and the batters can get a good stance in the batter's box and the pitchers are satisfied with the mound. There are going to be some growing pains, I'm sure in getting the stadium to its best state of playability and once we do, you know, and I figure it will be halfway through the season, we will start to get some sense of the character of the stadium and what types of players might succeed and which types of players may have problems. I think every team has to consider its own stadium in terms of building a team because you play half your games there and I don't think we are going to be able to anticipate this winter what we are going to need next summer. I think it's going to take some at least a half a season playing there before we could start to form some opinions.

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