NL DIVISION SERIES: ASTROS v BRAVES

October 8, 1999

Larry Dierker

LARRY DIERKER: Yes.

LARRY DIERKER: Yes, I do. You know, a lot has been made of starting these guys on the fourth day but all of them are healthy. They don't have any trouble. I thought Lima pitched well, well enough to win most games. He was on the fourth day for the second, maybe the third time; this will be the third time in a row. I don't think he will have any problem. There are some guys that are battling with elbow or shoulder miseries, blister problems. You know, a lot of things can happen to a starter pitcher where he just can't make the call on the fourth day. He needs to be in a five-day rotation, sometimes even an off day, a pitcher can be on the sixth day. Hamilton was sort of in that mode. We wouldn't be able to do this with him but with Lima, Reynolds and Hampton, I don't see any problem with it.

LARRY DIERKER: I have thought about doing it with the three guys we have but we need a fourth and even if we had a fourth, I might be a little hesitant. One of the things that you realize when or I realize when I came down to the dugout, I have a lot of ideas, but there also are a lot of things that are modes of behavior, of pitching rotations, hitting patterns and lineups. You know, to try to break with tradition, so to speak, sharply. It's not easy. Even if I had the fourth pitcher, I might not do it just simply because the guys would look at the whole season and think about pitching every fourth day and they would wonder if they could make it and they would be pitching with doubts and throw (inaudible). It would be unchartered waters for them. Yeah, I might do it, but I probably won't.

LARRY DIERKER: I think he will be good. He started in Atlanta. He had to fight for us a little harder than he sometimes does because you didn't really have his good split finger pitch. That pitch is generally the one that, more than anything else, predicts whether he's going to pitch well or not pitch well. Usually when he doesn't have it, he has trouble. When he does have it, he pitches a good ballgame. The fact that he was able to pitch a good ballgame without having a real good one I think is a confidence builder for him. It gives him control in his pitches. If he comes back tomorrow and has that pitch and still has the control, he could pitch better than he did in that first game.

LARRY DIERKER: I don't know why, you know. We made that move about midway through my career, maybe a third of the way through. I pitched in a four-man rotation for maybe two, three years. It may have been because they were trying to protect arms or may have been teams that had guys with sore arms and they probably began to worry about the depths of their pitching. They didn't want to hurt guys s. I think it would be hard to go back for the same reason and it would be even more risky to pitch guys on the fourth day all year long if they had multicontracts where you owed them money on into the future. You don't want to hurt a guy and then have to pay him for years where he can't perform. I think, not only in pitching, but in players in every decision that we make in baseball today, is based on different set of conditions, most of them regarding money, and wanting to make sure that your money is well spent.

LARRY DIERKER: One of our problems has be the outfield because we lost Hidalgo in August for the rest of the year. So we have been using a patchwork setup in the outfield for almost two months now and I am aware of match-up statistics, but I don't feel like I'm a slave to them. Yet when you look at Javier and he's two for 27 or Glavine that's enough at bat to see well, this is pretty remarkable. (Inaudible) where I can place him. Hasn't faced Glavine that much. Derek is hitting pretty well, but in general, we don't have the left-handed batters to face him. I mean, if I were Bobby Valentine, I would play Ventura against Glavine. They face left-handed pitchers routinely. The guys we've been playing in the outfield, Warren and Spiers that are left-handed, they don't face that many left-handed pitchers, so I wouldn't expect them to perform as well against Glavine as a left-handed pitcher. So I'm looking for right-handed hitters and the ones I have are Bell and Mieske, and Everett (audible) hasn't really hit very well either and I could play Biggio in the outfield. I thought about playing Russ Johnson and playing Biggio out there. At some point you have to think about who your horses are and which are the ones you've been riding all year that have taken you to this point, and Everett is one of them, so he's playing.

LARRY DIERKER: I think the pitching is primary reason that the better hitters have trouble in the playoffs. However, there are other reasons and some of it, I think, has to do with what's going on right here in this room. You know, the more you talk about it, the more the guy becomes aware of it. The more it's a story on radio or TV and in the newspaper, the more a guy thinks about it and sometimes thinking about it is the worse thing you could do. We also are dealing with a small sample. I can pick 50 at best out of any players here and take the 50 at best even though they are not swinging very well against any pitcher; even the pitchers that are, you know, barely good enough to be in the league and they can't get hits off them. So part of it is a small sample. Part of it, I think, is a stigma thing which keeps being brought to their attention; and part of it, and the most part of it, is just real good pitching.

LARRY DIERKER: Yes. Tim Bogar is healthy and playable and Tim Bogar was a big part of us getting to where we are here and I considered playing him today and I will consider playing him tomorrow. I think he should have the experience of getting into one of these games. I don't know if I will or not at this point, but he's ready and he's anxious to play and he's a good player. I'm going to try to find a way to get him in there.

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