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MLB WORLD SERIES: RANGERS v CARDINALS

October 19, 2011

Ron Washington

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI: Game One

Q. When you came to Texas the Rangers were a station-to-station team, how big a priority was it for you to diversify the offense and how much impact has that had?
RON WASHINGTON: Well, you know, all my years in the game, I came up through the Kansas City Royals organization and the Dodgers organization. They've always been organizations that believed in completeness, and that's doing everything that the game says you have to do, play defense, pitch, run the bases, try to look for opportunities to take advantage of, and when an opportunity presented itself to me to be the manager of a ballclub, I had to put my stamp on it, and my stamp is what I learned through all my years in the game. I thought it was important that number one, you've got to pitch. It comes into play every single day. Number two, you have to play defense. Those are two parts of the game I feel should never take a day off. Good pitching stops hitting.
And then the next thing you have to do is take advantage on the base paths. I was a speed guy. The organizations I was in were speed people, and everywhere I've been in this game, it's been a part of my game. So we try to get people around us that can help us to develop the style of baseball that we're used to playing. Gary Pettis came from the California Angels, one of the best base-running guys in the game, one of the best outfielders in the game, five Gold Gloves, although one of them I thought they gave to him (laughter). And he was a defensive guy, and then Dave Anderson.
I think every day when you can catch the ball and pitch, you give yourself an opportunity where it doesn't take a whole lot of base hits to score runs. It might only take one base hit through the course of the game simply because the pitcher kept you there, the defense made the plays, and it's one hit.
We also had to get the personnel, and Jon Daniels and his group got us the personnel that was capable of doing that. Once we got personnel, we had to let them go, we had to let them make mistakes, we had to let them find out what they could do rather than rein them in. And now they understand the game and what they're capable of doing, and here we are.

Q. Do you have fewer butterflies or feel any different than you did before Game 1 in San Francisco last year?
RON WASHINGTON: The butterflies are there but they're only there because you want to hurry up and get started and get into the swing of the game and see what's going to happen. I think every competitor goes through the butterflies, so they're there. I'm controlling them a lot better.

Q. Can you talk about how the weather might affect any of your strategy or your thoughts on what you might or might not do, especially tonight if it gets very windy?
RON WASHINGTON: Well, you know, once again, we're going to look for opportunities to take advantage of through the course of the ballgame. If they're there, we'll take advantage of them. If they're not there, we have to play the game the way the game presents itself. And I think when you keep yourself in that type of mode, you don't miss what you are capable of doing, and that's where we want to be. We just want to be in a position to do what we are capable of doing.
You know, the weather may stop us from doing some of that, but we can play baseball and we can play any type of baseball that we have to play. And because we can do that, we don't feel any pressure to go out there and play in the weather.

Q. Do you make anything of Colby's road and home splits? And is it just coincidence that you lined him up in all three series to start off on the road?
RON WASHINGTON: It just was coincidence. I think the fact that he has those splits, I keep getting reminded. It's not anything I look at because at this point I trust every one of my guys. And if I had to pitch Colby in Texas, he pitches in Texas. He beat the Yankees last year in Texas.
I think you throw all that out the door. It may come into play at some point, but right now we're just trying to get the best pitchers we have out there. Right now Colby is one of our best. And he's throwing the second game and it so happens the next time he throws is back on the road.

Q. Because your pitchers so rarely swing the bat, do you want them to be careful when they're swinging and sort of take, for want of a better word, conservative swings so they don't risk injury?
RON WASHINGTON: I certainly haven't given them that direction, but I hope that every opportunity they walk up to the plate that I have to bunt them. If they walk up there and nobody is on the bag, of course I'll let them swing. But I hope the opportunity keeps presenting itself that they just keep moving runners closer to home plate.
It is what it is, and C.J. can swing the bat a little bit and Colby is capable of swinging the bat a little bit, but I would like to keep them in bunting mode.

Q. Was moving Cruz up a protection issue? And did you think about higher than sixth?
RON WASHINGTON: No. Moving him up was a protection issue, but moving him higher than sixth, no. You know, everyone made a big deal out of Cruz hitting seventh, but Cruz ended up hitting seventh simply because when Cruz comes back, my Nos. 1 through 6 were doing the job, Cruz was struggling. That's why he ended up in the seventh spot. But now that he's found his stroke and we're in the World Series, I just feel like I need to protect him. Mike Napoli is great protection.

Q. What do you think some of the biggest challenges are for players who have never played at Busch Stadium getting used to a new field?
RON WASHINGTON: Well, I think yesterday we cleared all that up. We went out there, and it's a baseball field. We've played in many of them. This is a beautiful baseball field. Gary made sure that the outfielders had a feel of what the balls were doing. They bounced off all the walls out there. The infielders got an opportunity to check out the surface, and other than that, it's a baseball field. As long as the lights are on and you can see, we can go play baseball.

Q. How much more confident are you this year than last with the depth that you have in the bullpen? And do you think that that's your biggest advantage in this series?
RON WASHINGTON: I'm very confident. We have some experience down there. And when we ended up having to put Ogando in that bullpen, it solidified completely. So we are very confident in our bullpen this year more than last year because we had some youth down there, and Derek Holland was a part of that youth. But now we're solid, and if it comes into play, it comes into play. But I certainly hope that our starters keep the ball for quite a while.

Q. Just back to Cruz, so when you get to the DH again, do you leave him in the six spot or do you flip it back to the way it was because it was so successful in the last series?
RON WASHINGTON: No, it'll stay the way it is.

Q. Going back to the running game, how big a challenge is it to try to steal against a catcher like Yadier Molina or are the steals pretty much coming off the pitchers regardless?
RON WASHINGTON: You steal off the pitcher. If the numbers say that it's a good running number, we're going to run. Whether it's Johnny Bench or whoever is back there, Molina, we're going to run, if the numbers say we can run. If the numbers say we can't run, we're not going to run. If the numbers say we can run, we're always going to maximize our lead, and if the numbers say we can run, all he's going to be doing is making good throws.

Q. Can you talk about the pitchers?
RON WASHINGTON: Yes, we're not going to force anything, so if we don't run it's because the St. Louis Cardinals' pitchers are shutting us down. But we're not stealing off of Molina.

Q. As happy and excited as we are for Mr. Treanor and Mr. Lowe, a lot of the Japanese fans are disappointed about the two Japanese pitchers. Tell us about the thinking behind the roster change.
RON WASHINGTON: We as the Texas Rangers are very disappointed, also, but we're trying to diversify our roster, and bringing Treanor on, he gives us versatility. I have two catchers that are pretty good, and I like to use them in different ways, and Treanor gives us that versatility.
When you look in our bullpen, Tateyama didn't make the first round, he made the second round. So we made the move right there for that purpose with Tateyama.
And in with Uehara's case, we have a lot of confidence in Uehara. He's on our team for another year, but Mark Lowe, if he wouldn't have come down with the hamstring injury, he'd have been on our roster. He's been working behind the scenes, it's been three weeks, Mark Lowe, ready to go, simply because Uehara wasn't effective in this last round. We did what we had to do to try to make our team competitive against these St. Louis Cardinals. And that was tough to call both of those guys in and to tell them that. And we certainly didn't do it because your media was going to get upset or to try to appease anyone. That's just the way it went, and our heart certainly went into it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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