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NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: PHILLIES v DODGERS

October 21, 2009

Charlie Manuel

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: Game Five

Los Angeles Dodgers 4
Philadelphia Phillies 10

CHARLIE MANUEL: Before I get started, I'd like to congratulate the Dodgers on their season, and most of all Joe Torre. Joe Torre is a class act. I have a lot of respect for him. He's one of my favorite guys in baseball, and I played in the Dodger organization for a little while. I've always thought they were a first-class organization, and believe me, I wish them all the luck in the world. They've got a good team, and I'm sure they're going to be back here for a long time. I look forward to playing them in the future.

Q. What do you think made the difference for you guys in this series from a baseball standpoint?
CHARLIE MANUEL: I think first of all that we were able to -- we scored runs. Tonight we scored ten runs, of course, we scored 11 the other night, and big victory of course when Rollins got the big hit for us, we were able to do things in the right moment of the games, especially the close games. They beat us the one game in Dodger Stadium, and that was a real close game, and they got the big hit and they executed at the end. I think the way we played, and two of these games we got the lead on them, and I think that meant a whole lot. That's the ones we scored the runs in.
But as far as the close games go, I felt like we executed and our pitching and our hitting and our defense was timely, and I felt like that's what showed up.

Q. Can you talk about the decision for the pitching change for Cole Hamels.
CHARLIE MANUEL: Yeah. I was sitting there, and Cole was -- already had like 87, 90 pitches, and I'm sitting there thinking, he didn't have real good command, and he didn't have good stuff. They were swinging good at him. We got to a point there in the game, especially once we had Happ ready, I'm thinking -- I was looking for where I wanted to use him, and if I was going -- and Dubee says something to me, "He's ready, Chuck," and I thought to myself where I want to get him, and I thought before Ethier come up, I wanted to put Happ on Belliard. That was my decision to go get him.

Q. Is this lineup the closest thing to sort of what people think of American League lineups?
CHARLIE MANUEL: I think our lineup -- I think our lineup is good, is outstanding, like when we're hitting. We hit spurts sometimes, and of course every team does that, but sometimes we linger quite a while in those kind of slumps or kind of we go stale for a while. But at the same time, I think if you look down through our lineup, we've got guys that are dangerous, and our power shows up, even in our seventh hole. And Ruiz is capable -- I always say he's capable of sitting anywhere from 12 to 20 homers. Eventually I think our power shows up much more than our speed. When we've got everything going, the top of our lineup with Rollins and Victorino, and Utley is a tremendous base runner, and Werth can run. When we've got our speed going and these guys are getting on base, that's how we generate a lot of runs.
But a lot of times we win games just because of our power and the fact that we can hit the ball out of the ballpark. We need to be a little bit more consistent, and I'd say we can be a better hitting team. But right now for the National League I think we're outstanding, and we can stay after you, and we could put a big number on you any time during the game, and that makes us a real good team.
As far as comparison with the American League, I think the DH, sometimes you can lock in a little bit stronger offense, and I think there's some teams in the American League that are definitely very offensive minded, and I think that we can play with them, but I think our offense has got to be clicking, like, our speed and our power.

Q. You do have a great offense, but you're coming into the World Series with one starting pitcher who's been consistent thus far. Do you need to have more consistent starting pitching to repeat?
CHARLIE MANUEL: Yeah, we do. We need to have more starting pitching, but at the same time, when I say we need to have more, in some ways we do, we just need to get that pitching consistent. I seen our pitching after the All-Star break, once we got Cliff Lee and we picked up Pedro, I've seen our pitching better, and that's the best pitching that we've had since I've been here. I think in order for us to really have a lot of success in the series, of course, we're going to have to have better consistent starting pitching.
But we are very capable of doing that. And I think as I'm sitting here, I know we can win the World Series again. But things have to be right for us, and plus we've got to play the best.

End of FastScripts

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