Q. We haven't seen your lineup yet. Can you give it to us?
PAT MURPHY: You do this all the time. Can you not figure this out? It was out at 8:00 this morning. What do we got? We can give it to these guys early. What are they going to do with it? Most of them don't know baseball anyway. What are they going to do with it? (Laughter).
It's all in jest.
Q. I'm wondering about the top of the lineup with a lefty going for the Cubs, Chourio.
PAT MURPHY: Unbelievable. With all your vacation you're still following us that close. Unbelievable. Yes, Chourio. Who's next?
Q. Contreras?
PAT MURPHY: No.
Q. The plot thickens.
PAT MURPHY: Plot thickens. Chourio, Turang, William, Yelich, Vaughn, Frelick, Durbin, Perkins, Ortiz.
Q. How much did it change things when they named Boyd? Did you sort of sense that one coming?
PAT MURPHY: No, I mean, we thought it was down between a couple guys. It was Assad, it was Colin Rea, it was Boyd, so we were kind of preparing for all three.
Yeah, Boyd has been so darned good for them that I'm not surprised. Threw 58 pitches on their first game, and I know who the individual is, and I was certain he'd be ready.
Q. I wanted to ask you about a night in Cincinnati in mid-August where you're playing the Reds, it was during the streak, and Monasterio hits a home run in the 11th. He said after the game --
PAT MURPHY: Off a lefty, first-pitch changeup.
Q. He said during the game you went to him like three, four times, like be ready, be ready. Is that an example of getting that player's focus ready and then making that change against your opponent at the right moment?
PAT MURPHY: So, like, I could just say yeah, it was a great move on my part. But the truth is I say that to every bench player almost every game. Like hey, here's a situation I can see. Hey!
So I don't deserve like I had some magical premonition. It was more you go to your bench players and you let them know what might be the situation.
Oftentimes you're not right about it, but at least they have a heightened awareness, like yeah, I'd better go look at that guy. I wish I could tell you, no, I just had a feeling. (Smiling).
Q. On the roster, could you just go into an explanation on Gasser over a couple guys like Diehl that you picked him over and then the Hoskins-Lockridge, choosing the speed over the potential power bat, and if the final few weeks kind of made that decision for you?
PAT MURPHY: Well, the Rhys one is very difficult because he has playoff experience. He's been a leader of this team. It's a tough decision.
But we felt like the need for Lockridge specifically because of his ability to run, steal a base, his proficiency at it, and his ability to play great defense in the outfield and conduct ABs can't be denied.
He went back down to Triple-A and did a great job. We think that's a serviceable part, and when you look at the potential changes the game, we have our first baseman that we're going with in Vaughn, and to carry 15 and 11, which we did look at for a long time, without the guy at second base in extra innings, I think you leave yourself exposed.
The last pitcher decision came down to the opponent. Looking at left-handed options for them, who we might -- where can this 12th pitcher exploit something about them or be in a serviceable role and give us a little bit of length.
We went to that.
Things like, have they seen him before. Things like effectiveness in the role that we'd put him in. That led to that.
Q. Murph, you have an extra off-day here that you don't normally have between Game 1 and Game 2. Does it allow you to do anything differently, maybe be more aggressive in the first two games knowing that you have that built in?
PAT MURPHY: Yeah, the schedule of this five-game series is the reason you'd look at bullpen way differently. It's different than the regular season. It's the tournament, as they say. I guess that's the word everybody is using. But in the tournament now, you've got to take advantage of the off-days, and the way you take advantage of it is you can be more aggressive with -- both teams can be more aggressive with your bullpen.
Q. Because you guys have had so much extra time off than other teams, do you worry about that for today and shutting it down tomorrow?
PAT MURPHY: Yeah, it's the number one thing. I called as many people as you can imagine that have done that, ex-managers, ex-players: What do you got? They're all like, brutal, man. It's brutal. Everybody to the person said, it's not a positive.
But for our particular situation, to be honest with you, I think it is a positive in that -- and again, if we don't have success, then everybody is like, oh, that layoff, and complain and explain.
We knew the rules. We knew how this is. You've got to admire the team for having the most wins in baseball, and this is what we've got to deal with. It's the way it is.
Complain or explain, doesn't matter. We wanted it to be -- the workouts to be uncomfortable and competitive. I think we did that. It's not the same. You can bring fans in. You can play scrimmages. You can do all that kind of stuff. It's not the same.
This is a hard game to practice with the same intensity. It's a game that obviously is played every day. So to take that big window of time off -- there was a need for rest. There was. Our team was banged up. We limped home. Our September was the worst month of the year record-wise. We limped home. You could say we coasted, natural coasting because we were ahead and because we couldn't expose certain pitchers and we had so many injuries.
But be that as it may, we didn't have a healthy team when we finished the season. So we needed some days. Did we need five days? No. No. But no complaining or explaining.
Q. Just wondering with Quinn Priester, what's the biggest thing that's impressed you or what's stood out the most from your perspective about the season he's had since you all acquired him?
PAT MURPHY: Mid-season, I mean, he pitched the game at Colorado, and was his second game against the Cubs --
Q. He pitched twice against the Cubs.
PAT MURPHY: Yeah, but his second game he got blistered. That was the change, that the Cubs blistered this guy, and he wanted to continue pitching and his competitive nature came out, and actually the last couple innings of that outing he was pretty darned effective.
I think that failure, if you will, for him, like, launched him into open ears, okay, how do I figure this out, and we got the best version of him because of his competitive nature and we got the best version of him going forward, and it's been miraculous. He's been sensational for us.
They don't call him a rookie because he has a certain number of appearances, but he's for all practical purposes a rookie.
You look at the number of rookie starts we had between Patrick and Miz, Henderson and him, it's most of our season. So it's pretty cool to see this guy come into his own. It really is.
Q. Murph, after kind of the up and down season Miz had, especially in the second half, can you walk through what went into the decision to roster him here and then what your expectations are for role potentially in this series or just how you think he can help you?
PAT MURPHY: Yeah, I think he can help us for sure. I think he will help us. He's not going to start, but he'll come in the game.
He's got great stuff, and he'll hone it in and I think pitch well.
Q. You had mentioned that you had a pretty good idea of the potential three starters they might go with today. Counsell is known for waiting to announce his starters as long as he can. At what point did you find out it was going to be Boyd, and then how much does it help just the familiarity between these two teams that whoever they were going to roll with, you guys have faced?
PAT MURPHY: Yeah. I mean, I found out about Boyd last night late. And again, I respect this guy a ton as a pitcher and as a person. It's a guy that we were very interested in before he signed with Cleveland, so we know a lot about him.
But familiarity in sports is a common thing, and it really comes down to the moments, being ready in the moments.
I think that there will be no secrets how we employ guys. Yeah, you can; you can deploy them different ways and because it's playoff baseball it can be earlier or you might have a little more coverage, whatever, but nothing is going to shock us.
There's going to have to be decisions made on do we take this matchup or do we take this one. The Cubs in this first series were faced with that; do I do this, do I do that.
It's part of our game.
Q. The Cubs get a lot of attention for their defense, particularly in the Padres series, this Wild Card series. I'm curious from your vantage point how you would characterize them offensively.
PAT MURPHY: Offensively? Very mature. A guy like Hoerner coming into his own, a guy like Busch coming into his own, Suzuki making a jump from last year with the air pull. Tucker is a great hitter; what can you say. PCA, he's young, but he responds.
So from an outsider looking at their team, and I watched a lot of them this year, it's pretty impressive 1 through 9. The Shaw kid coming on the way he is doing what he's doing. You can see the confidence starting to ooze out of him. Great decision to just leave him in there and not replace him, I think. And Dansby is a big-time player, man. He's a big-time player.
I don't know if I covered everybody, but Happ has been a one-man wrecking crew of us, so we hope to try to contain him in some way.
Q. On Boyd, he's a guy that fills the zone pretty well. You guys have a pretty low swing rate. You're a pretty patient offense. I think Couns even yesterday said you tell the guys not to swing.
PAT MURPHY: He said I do?
Q. Yeah.
PAT MURPHY: He didn't finish that. I tell them don't jump in front of it. Try to get hit by a pitch. When I was a bench coach, he didn't like that. I would say, hey, man, do your best. It's not your fault. We put you in there. It's not your fault. And if you feel like you've got no options, just jump in front of it. But whatever you do, don't swing. It's kind of this jest.
Q. So it lacked a little context, okay.
PAT MURPHY: I do that with Durbin a lot.
Q. How do you think your offense is going to strike that balance of doing what you do well but not getting too passive against a guy that can throw strikes?
PAT MURPHY: Yeah, well, I mean, the bottom line is you can't get involved in counts with a guy like Boyd. If you get involved, oh, it's 3-1, I'm going to get a cookie. That's doesn't always happen. The guy can pitch a little bit.
And the same thing, hey, it's 1-2, I've got to swing at anything. No, he pitches on the edges. He's not fine-tuned command. It isn't Maddux. He's just really good, really good stuff, loves the glove side. It comes down to that pitch.
But we're not going to just sit and take. It's not what we do. We might take more than others because, like I said, we've got young guys and it takes them a few pitches to get adjusted.
Q. One more Misiorowski question. You've challenged a lot of your young hitters over the last couple years in a pretty frank way sometimes. Are you able to do that? Are willing to share whether you've done that with Misiorowski?
PAT MURPHY: I think putting him in bases loaded the other day, wouldn't you term that as a challenge? And he actually did the job; he got a swinging bunt. We would have been out of the inning. He broke down after that, but all in all, I think that's how you challenge players.
You approach everybody a little bit different. I don't certainly have a book on it. Maybe in the next 15 or 20 years I'll get there. But when I'm 86 maybe I'll get a better feel for it.
No, I mean, yeah, we've challenged him in our own way. Maybe not the same way I challenged Durbin or maybe not the same way I've challenged Sal, but we've challenged him, yeah.
Q. What kind of role do you see for Isaac in this series, and kind of in the final analysis, he was so important for you guys early in the season leading up through the All-Star break. What do you think happened with him in the second half toward the end?
PAT MURPHY: I think there's players on every team, including the fourth row there on their team, like there's players on every team that we're like (inhaling, exhaling), you know.
We are in a position where Chourio now back healthy, Perkins elite defender, Collins kind of isn't producing the same way. A lot of is had that break with the paternity leave. I mean, God bless. That's way more important than baseball.
And then when he came back he just didn't get on track very quickly and then we pulled him out and Chourio was back and it all kind of snowballed. Not to his fault. He's still having good ABs. But I think we'll use him off the bench sometimes and I think he'll start some games.
He's a huge part of this year, one of the most underrated guys on the club.
Q. Have you talked to Freddy this morning? I know pitchers are superstitious before starts like this. Does he have any different demeanor than he would during the regular season, or is this a little bit more for him as well?
PAT MURPHY: He's done it before. Freddy has done this before. I didn't really gauge that. We were just kind of -- God, I forgot the word. What's the Spanish word for little guy?
Q. Chiquito, pequeño?
PAT MURPHY: Pequeño. So he taught me a new word today, pequeño. We just kind of messed with each other, and I said, Freddy you're our closer today. You're our closer, so go out there like you're closing the game. We just joked with each other back and forth.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports