Larry Jewell

Now if I do, that makes a difference. 3, 2, 1. Familiar face, familiar head coach. Mike, it's good to have you with us. Hey, it's great to be here. And it's, you know, I have a hard time with people who say Southern California is hot because this weather is perfect out here. About 80, 80 degrees right now. And it feels nice to get away from that 105 degree weather and be here in the nice weather. I know if you look back through your previous two years, you had two great experiences here, but this wasn't one of the jobs you intended. Oh, it really wasn't. I had no intentions or thoughts of being with this team at all. My job was mainly to make sure the field got ready for them before the games and take care of the field. You know, they had some problems that they had to deal with at the manager spot and coaching spots. And we're just going to try to go forward and do what we can do. People would be interested to know Brian Greybeck's on the other side tonight. He's playing for Long Beach. I don't know if he's been activated or not, but he's been over there and we talked to him, he's fine. And Mike Smith is, I believe, going to play in Chico. So both guys have landed on their feet and going to go forward and they'll try to win championships for their teams just like we will here. We must be honest, it is a shame to see them gone, but for proper inspiration for both sides, it's good to see them have an opportunity. Oh, no doubt about it. And you know, I think maybe St. George, the people there may not understand the dealings of professional baseball. You know, we might think we might feel bad for those guys, but you know, that's how the business is. And ultimately it's Dennis Narlinger's team. He can make any move he wants. He's the one that pays all the bills and signs all of our checks. And so ultimately he has the last say in the personnel and what happens on the field. And all we can do is say yes or no and go forward with it. He's given us a chance, and me in particular, to go try to win him a second championship. And that's what our thoughts are focused on right now. Good opportunities on both sides, but not necessarily ashamed. That's just the way it works. Yeah, there's, you know, Brian Grabeck and Mike Smith I was real close with last year. We worked. They were players, but they were actually coaches on the field. Just without the title. And I worked real close with them last year at the professional level. You know, I get other guys input. You know, I Talk to Rod McCall all the time and as I did Brian last year and Mike Smith and get the feel of the team. And, you know, with a lot of those guys, that's just how you have to work this game and not be the main guy all the time. And where at the college level, it might be a little more teaching and instruction all the time. At this level of baseball, you have to understand what's going on in the clubhouse and what's, you know, what the team's attitude is and try to go from there. One thing that is happening with this team, it seems like they're coming together well, you know, it seems like that to me. I don't have anything to compare it with because I haven't been with him the whole time. But to me, it seems like a lot of guys. There's a lot of young guys on this team who should and could look to the experience of Rod McCall and Scott Davison and Adam Butler and some of those guys to lead them along the way. If they're open and willing to do that, which I think they are. From what I've seen, this team can go a long way. If we start getting individualized and worrying just about ourselves and what we're going to be doing as individuals, I think that's where the problem occurs. Especially with four weeks under, four weeks left of the regular season and probably five or six weeks left in the entire season. Our main focus should be on the end of the year and trying to win a championship. Surprising the talent that is now coming together, a lot of it young, and they seem to be doing well. Yeah. I was extremely happy with Lubner's pitching performance the other night. He really came back and battled out of a tough situation after an error, and then he gives up a grand slam on the next pitch. And after I went out there and said, be aggressive, you know, it's 7:2. Be aggressive. They hit a home run. We still got the lead. Well, the next pitch was a ground ball double play. That was an error. And the next pitch is right down the middle. It's a home run. That's the way baseball is. But if the. It doesn't matter if you're young or old, if you have character, then you're going to be able to battle through a lot of things in this game. And he was able to do that. Hopefully this will be my first opportunity to see Matt no throw and I'm looking forward to that tonight. One thing about this, these guys will toughen up. And when that happens, that's kind of a reward to the manager. Oh, there's no doubt about it. All I want to do, you know, I'm coming into a tough spot. A lot of people in baseball would love to go manage a professional team. There's no doubt about it. So I'm not saying I'm feeling sorry for myself or in any way, but it's a tough spot to be in. A lot of the guys, if not all of them, really liked and respected Brian and Mike, was a great player and did a great job for the team. And so you have to win their respect and win their confidence just by your daily actions. You can't talk these guys, 22 guys, into having respect for. You've got to just show them that you're going to work hard and you're all for what they want to accomplish. The only thing I want to accomplish is winning right now. That's the only thing I've got on my mind, and that's what we'll try to do. Previous two years, they grew to know you, Some of these guys who were here and they responded well. It was reunion as much as anything. Yeah. And I think it was really important to have a guy like Joe Trippy and a guy like Rod McCall who knew me for 95 or 100 games last year and knew what I was all about, knew what I could do. Those guys are veterans and they can tell some of the other guys what's going to happen. And I think that was a real important thing for us as me being named the manager. I wasn't coming in with nobody knowing what I could do, where it might take a month or two to say, hey, this guy, he's okay. Where if you have Rod and Joe and some of these guys that know me, telling the other guys, they might be fooled into believing it. I know this was a little bit of a shock for you, but you seem to be responding well emotionally and talent wise. Well, you know, for myself, I take everything day by day as it comes. I mean, I don't get. I don't change much from day to day, you know, from win to a loss or being named manager or bench coach. It's, you know, I would really like to see the St. George Pioneers stay in St. George next year and talk. To tell you the truth, it's probably up in the air. It really is, because we need people to come out to the games. I mean, that's the bottom line, I think they're seeing true professional players at a high level of baseball. And so I thank the fans that I see there every single night and I'd like to see a lot more. It would be really nice to see the stands full or three quarter full every night. That would be a great thing for us. One of the things that happened last year from about mid year on is the audience responded emotionally and we heard a lot of cheering and a lot of the people really cheering on this team. Yeah, you know, last year I remember as we got to the end of the year when, you know, it looked like we were going to win the. We already won the first half. It looked like we were going to come and win the second half and people started, you know, really starting to feel like I need to get out and see the Pioneers or whatever it might have been. Maybe the weather got cooler, who knows? But you know, I haven't been to the stadium enough to know this year, to be honest with you, how the crowd has reacted. But we don't really worry about the crowd. It's just kind of a side note that to have a real successful professional team, you've got to have people in the stands. And you know, that's only for the owner and the president to decide how many fans are going to be enough to keep the team here. And you know, that's one of the main reasons I took this job is I want to do everything I can to keep the Pioneers in St. George. I know it's only been three games, but I'd like an assessment of how you feel this team has responded. Well, I think they've responded very well. We leave bases loaded in the ninth of the only game we lost this week against, I think a good Yuma team. And if that's a team we're going to be playing in the playoffs, which it probably will the first round. I feel pretty confident, you know, they've got a good team. But my assessment, I guess of our team would be that these guys really truly want to win. There's no doubt about it. And if you don't have that as your basis, then there's no reason going any further. And they've got that they want to win and it seems like they play hard every night. At our very first meeting that I had with them as a manager, I said the only thing, I don't care what you do at night, we don't have curfews. You know me from last year, we don't have curfews. But when it comes time for bp, we're professional about it. And when it comes time for game time, we're all ready to play. And you play 100% for the six hours that you're at the ballpark and, you know, have fun after that. But for those six hours, I want you to work, work as hard as you can. And I think they do. That response seems to be positive from where I look. Well, good. I mean, that's what if you see guys hustling out ground balls and you see guys diving for balls and, you know, really getting upset when something goes wrong, that they really want to win, that's the good thing. When people don't care, I'll let them know. And I think we can move on from there. We're going to talk a little bit more about the background here and what's ahead tonight after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. We were talking about the people you have here to play for you emotionally, how are they doing? I think they're doing real well. And again, these guys here on the team, especially the older ones, maybe not some of the rookies and the young guys, they know what baseball is all about. Professional baseball and the business end of it, you know, you get the Rod McCall's and the Joe Trippies and the Anthony Lewis, those type of guys, and the Scotty Davidsons. You get all these guys who have been in pro ball for five, six, seven, 10 years. There's no loyalty at all in the game of professional baseball and especially minor league baseball. There's just not. The whole goal is winning. And it might sound hard and cruel and a little bit mean, but that's just the way it is. And if one guy's not getting it done, whether it's the manager or the pitching coach or the second baseman or the shortstop, you get rid of them and get a new guy in. It's sad in one respect, but on the other hand, you have to go forward and try to win. Interesting. You mentioned no loyalty, but when these ballplayers are teammates, they seem to be willing to help one another. There's no doubt. Interesting story. Brian Greybeck got hit by Long beach earlier in the year and got thrown out, actually, and got hit and now he's over there playing for them. If a team truly hates to play against another guy and maybe even hates that person, that's probably one of the better guys on that team because, you know, if you're not disliked in any way, then you're probably okay. You know, you're probably not a Very good player. It's the. We were at the Dodgers Reds game last night and nobody was booing the people who. You didn't know their names, but everybody's booing Ken Griffey Jr. So that's the point I'm trying to make is if you're a good player, people will take you in and no matter if they hated you on another team, they can take you on their team and just become part of their team. Let's talk about the matchup with this team tonight. This is your first time on the road as the head coach, as manager. Yeah. And not counting the 57 games, whatever last year we were. But Long beach is a great stadium. Reminds me a little bit of Scottsdale. And in that you've really got to hit the ball to get it out. The air seems a little bit heavy. And we might have hit four or five home runs here in BP where, you know, in St. George we're hitting 20, 25. So I can see this being more of a singles park and more of a move runners along. And every run might count here, whereas not saying it doesn't anywhere else but at Hearst back home in St. George, a four or five run lead is probably not safe. Where I think here a four or five run lead. If you can do the right things, it's probably pretty safe. Pitchers defensively, this is one that really emphasizes that. Yeah. And tonight I've got Joe Trippy. I rested him Wednesday night because he's got a bad quad. And so I'm hoping that he'll be 100%. I've got him in left field and him in left and Ricky Osuna in right or in center. Those guys should be able to cover a lot of ground. And Mike Kobach in right field can cover his share of ground also. And here's where a guy like Ed Scott may be able to come in in late innings and give you the defense you need. And it's 400 to center and 350 to the corners. There's a lot of room in the gaps. 380, 390 in the gaps. And so the premium is really put on being able to run down fly balls. Every manager has a little different pattern. You changed your pattern on who you bat where and how you set them up. Yeah. And I can't really tell you what it was like before I got here, but that's one thing that I feel like is one of my strengths, is I'm able to look at guys and the way they swing and where they usually hit the ball where they like to hit the ball, and if they can bunt and if they can hit and run and move them, put them in the lineup. That's going to be conducive to what I want to do. So hopefully this is what we'll see all the way through and whether Nick Frank and Joe Trippy hit 1, 2. I may move Joe to the leadoff position once in a while, but over the next week and maybe probably during this road trip, I want to get to a set lineup that we're using every day. In fact, the last three days have been pretty much the same lineup, except for the guys I've tried to rest and get in. It's been one through nine. It's been the same lineup. So consistency means a lot to the players. I was going to ask you about that consistency. How much does it feel? Well, there's no doubt about it. That consistency from when Rod McCall knows he's going to hit fifth every night. And tonight I put Mike Barry in hidden behind him, whereas I put Mike Kolbach in the other night against Yuma because Yuma really doesn't have a real good left hander out of the pen. They've got a couple soft tossers, so I wasn't worried about hitting McCall and Kolbach back to back. Whereas these guys have two good left handers out of the pin. And I don't want to be in a situation late innings where they can come in and get two guys out with one pitcher. So I put Barry in and mix that up and go left, right, left. Now if they bring a left hander in to face Rod, they're not going to be able to leave that left hander in and get a good matchup with Barry. So things like that, we might tweak the lineup here and there, but overall we'll keep it pretty much the same. Defense seems to be getting stronger. Yeah, and that's another thing, consistency. You know, if a guy's moving from second to short to third to the outfield and then doing it all again, you know, they don't get in a rhythm. I think you really need your middle infielders working well together so they get comfortable with each other. You know, Tyler Perry's struggled a little bit defensively that I've seen, but I think he'll definitely be coming back. I've never seen him miss a ground ball right at him ever. So maybe just a little mental lapse there. But you know, we may try to. The trading or the roster finalization is the sixth and so we may make a move here or there. We've got a couple young guys that we probably need. Maybe a real good starting pitcher if we can find one. They're hard to come by right now. And maybe a real quality middle infielder. Who knows really what we need to put us over the top. But if we didn't make a change, I think we'd be okay. Anyway. One young man tonight is a pitcher that looks like he's going to be signed. How long will he stay with this team? Charlie Williamson played at Arizona State and played pro ball and got to high a ball, as high as a high A ball and then hurt his shoulder, actually hurt his labrum. Partial tear in his labrum. Sidearm guy, about 6'4,220 looks like. And what we're going to do after watching him throw a bullpen, you know, he didn't look overpowering, but it looked like he could maybe give us some innings. And I like instead of just telling a guy you don't really have what it takes or, you know, you're on the team, we're going to give him three days and see what he can do. And I was up front with him. I told him, you know, I'm going to sign you, I'm going to try to get you in a game while we're here in Long beach and see what you can do. If we can't find a guy in the next three days, a real good guy to fill this spot, then you'll probably be with us. If not, then you won't. And that's the nature of professional baseball. I think. So we'll just see how Charlie does. If we can get him in a game today or tomorrow. He threw an extended bullpen just now. I don't think today, maybe even to Sunday. Hard to even say when. One o' clock game Sunday. I would think tomorrow or Sunday. One of the two won't be today. What's your feeling about this final match up with this team down here, this three game matchup? Well, just knowing where they are in the standings and where we are and where we need to go in the season. We need to win all three. And that's hard to say coming in on the road, no matter who you're playing. We need to win the series for sure. But we would love to get out of here sweeping this series. You never know what Yuma's going to do. We might walk out of here in first place and that's the goal. If we can get in first place and not look back. I think it's going to give Yuma, put him behind the eight ball a little bit going into the playoffs. But on a side note, Larry, just I wanted to make sure I get this in. Brandon Lyon, who threw for me two years ago at Dixie State College and got drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays, has only been in professional baseball for 14 months and just got called up today to the Toronto Blue Jays and will be making his first major league start tomorrow against the Baltimore Orioles in Toronto. So we're happy for Brandon. No doubt about that. I talked to him this morning and he was driving in his car from Syracuse, New York up there, and I said, how you doing? He goes just driving up to Toronto like nothing else happened. So we're really happy for Brandon, newly married and now newly a major leaguer. Congratulations. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, that does a tremendous, tremendous. It's a tremendous asset to Dixie State College having somebody who has done that helps recruiting. Brandon will never know how much that means to the college. And hopefully it was reciprocal where we helped him a little bit get through what he wanted to do, but just made an incredible climb through the Toronto Blue Jays. He was in a ball last year, started in AA this year, went to aaa, and now he's up in the big leagues making whatever it is, thousand dollars a day or whatever he's gonna make. So, you know, we're happy for him. I know our time is a little close here, so let me congratulate you on that success and on the success you've had so far. Good luck tonight. Thanks a lot, Larry. We'll try to get through here. Sam it. Sam it. 3, 2, 1. We're visiting with Mike Littlewood, and this is kind of a risky time. You can end the year or you can continue on, and it has to be from day to day. You're absolutely right, Larry. It's. I guess the big saying is backs against the wall or behind the eight ball, or however you want to put it. We do have an uphill climb to try to use all the cliches I can use, but we have them at home now, and even though we're down two games to zero, we've got them where we want to play. Our team was put together to fit in this ballpark. Their team was put together to fit in Long Beach's park, and so hopefully we can get here and play our game. A lot of those balls that we hit would have been out of this park. And so we'll just, you know, throw the cards down and see where they fall. And all we can do is go out and play hard tonight. One of their good hits, in fact, two of them were back to back home runs in the second game. They were in the eighth inning and you know, Betancourt turned on one, left hander turned on one and hit it, you know, about 380ft, went over the right field fence and then Jones hit one. And you know, to be honest, we took exception to Jones standing on the plate and admiring his home run. And, you know, maybe that is what it took to get us fired up a little bit for tonight's game. We've got that in the back of our minds and hopefully it'll carry us through these next three games. For Jones, not a good hitting order at that point. His average is not that high, except in this series. Yeah, and you know, I think he's hot right now. In game one, I went out and we talked to Bucky and I said, hey, Jones is one of their hot hitters right now. Let's make sure we be careful with him. And so we know he's swinging the bat well, but I don't know if it was the guy's first home run he's ever hit in his life, but he sure stood at the plate and watched it go over the fence and then walked around the bases. So, you know, a true professional is going to hit a home run and get around the bases and get in the dugout and not show the other team up. And like I said, if that's what it takes to motivate this team, then anything we can use right now, we'll take it. One of the interesting motivations is the former member of this team who is at the ball well against you. Yeah, Brian has. Brian Grabeck's played very well. Of course, we knew he would. He's a very good player, has a good demeanor and just goes and plays the game. And, you know, I had a chance to talk to Christy, his wife, just before, and Sean, Little Sean is his boy. And there's no hard feelings between us at all. I think the business is a tough business and I think both of us have just kind of moved on and they're taking a very grown up approach to it. And I consider them friends. And I told Christie that. And, you know, I wish Brian all the luck in the world. I wish he wouldn't do as well against us. But, you know, Brian's a guy, if you make a mistake to him, which we did, we didn't want to throw the ball where we did when we hit the double in the second inning, and I thought that was probably the key hit of the night because we had two outs, we had a 20 lead, and we give it right back in that second inning where they come up and tie us. So that was big. And he plays a nice third base. And he's truly, I'm sure, been an asset to them over the last three or four weeks. One of the things most people don't think of with professional hitting is you don't stay with one team. That's different than amateur hitting or college hitting. Yeah, that's right. I mean, once you get to a place, unless you get booted out of college for some reason, you're going to stay there. But professional baseball in the big league level, with free agency and different things, you're going to move around. And it's no different down here. It's very rare, especially in this league, you might play five years and play for five different teams. It just depends how you fit and how you work with management and different things like that. It's very rare to see somebody with the same team for a lot of years in a row. Let's go into tonight's game. There's a possibility you can win three in a row? Well, absolutely. Last weekend we showed how well we can play here against Chico. Won the first two against probably the best team in the league. And, you know, probably if we would have had a little bit stronger bullpen that night, probably could have gone in and won that third when I had to throw, put Hero out there. And he did an admirable job, but he's not a pitcher. And so we feel confident here. There's no doubt about that. We don't feel like this series over in any way. And it's almost fun for me to watch these guys take BP and see them having so much fun right now and act like there's really not going to be a game tonight. But I'm excited to play. Seems like last year we're talking about this sort of stuff. It was interesting. In the Northern Division, you lose two at home, you win three on the road. And Chico ended up in the championship. Yeah, that's right. You know, everybody counted Chico out after they lost a couple, and, you know, a good team like that's going to come back and, you know, we're going to throw. We're going to throw some good pitchers out there and we might have a little bit more pitching depth than them. You know, it just. Believe it or not, we were two or three hits Away from the score being reversed. I really think that's the truth. And it takes key hits in playoff series and smart baseball and I thought they were very well played games. The two previous games. There's nothing we can be to really hang our head on. Rod McCullough hits 1, 386ft last night. The only problem is the fence is 387 and at our park the ball would have been 20ft out over the scoreboard. So you know, both teams have to play in the same park and that's why they play the games. But I feel comfortable here at home. That was almost a comeback. Looks like one of the struggles you have is getting runs in when you have that possibility. Yeah, there's no doubt about it, you know, and that's one thing Long beach has really done well is even with two outs, you know, they'll get a walk and they'll move runner and they'll get a key double and score the run. We just haven't been doing that in the previous two games and you know, it'll happen sooner or later. I think we just need to go up there and keep hitting the ball. Well, sometimes they're going to go right at people and sometimes they're going to fall in. For Long beach, they've been falling in, but with the exception of yesterday's, I really think with Brian Grabek's run scoring double in the second and their two home run balls, I really felt like we swung the bat much better than them yesterday. It's just, you know, Mike Barry lines out to somebody, Toby Sanchez lines out to the second baseman with bases loaded, things like that. That's the nature of baseball. I think that's why the game's so exciting. It's some of the bleeders that they got against Derrick Foz, the bleeder that went over second baseman's head with the score 3 2, made it 4 2. That one run was really big in that game. So things like that just dictate who's going to win a baseball game. And hopefully tonight we can come out on the winning edge. I know there's always that, what can we do? What can we do? Well, but on the other end, you never know until it's all over. Yeah, you know, if it was a two game series, it'd be over right now, but it's not. It's a five game series and you've got to win three games to win it all. And that's why we're going to play the next three here, hopefully different with A strategy in each ball game to make it happen. That's one of the challenges in post game. Well, the thing about strategy is their team is really set up around speed and moving runners and hit and run. And you know, that works to some degree here. But our team's not built that way. We've got a couple guys that can run. We talked about it last night when we were at Long beach on the pregame show. But our team's just not built that way. Our team's built around getting a couple guys on and getting a couple big hits. And if you don't get the big hits, you're not going to score the runs. But in this park, you have more of a chance to get those big hits. More than I would say, hitting, running and moving runners along. Again, our team is built for this park. I know earlier in the year we were talking about the strategy to put together a string of wins. You can really do it one win at a time in post game. Oh, absolutely. You know, your bullpen's at full strength. And I've, like I've said before, I feel really good about our effort. The effort's there. We want to win. We haven't really hurt ourselves. Long beach has just done the things that they need to do to win games, whether that's putting the ball in play and hitting it barely over the infielder's head or hitting a two run double with two outs. So they've done that. And so you have to tip your hat to them. They've beat us. There's no doubt about that. We haven't beat ourselves. And so you can kind of say, okay, let's just go out and try to play a quality baseball game again tonight and see if we can come out on the winning end. We'll talk about strategy in the second half of this game after this timeout. 3, 2, 1. Mike Littlewood. We've been talking about what happens on a game to game situation. This is game number three. Let's talk about the strategy in the second part of this. What is your strategy of who plays and when? I think tonight the big thing is for our team not to get tight. You know, they're going to be loose. They were loose during batting practice and they really think that all they need to do is win one game. That's what they need to do. So hopefully they're looking at it that way. Hopefully they're walking in here thinking it doesn't matter if we win tonight. If we don't win tonight, we got tomorrow night and if we don't win that night, we've got Saturday night. From our standpoint, every game we win is a chink in their armor, so to speak, and one game closer for us to winning this thing. I don't think we're out of it by any means, especially in this ballpark. So strategy wise, I just think we need to play every inning to win every single inning. Not to try to win the overall game, but try to win every single inning. And if you can do that, you're going to come out on top. You know, Victor Cepeda is going to start for us tonight and he's done a great job throwing strikes he's not afraid to throw in this ballpark. He's got good movement, good stuff. He might be the key to go up there and kind of get these guys off balance tonight. One of the things you're talking about was that strategy of who's pitching, who's playing is. But one of the things you have to run into. This team could win. Yeah, absolutely. I think strategy wise, from game one to game two, we change our lineup a little bit, putting Joe Trippier at the leadoff spot. So tonight's going to be the same lineup we had last night. I moved Anthony Lewis to the four hole behind or in front of Rod McCall. You know, just hoping that they would see Rod on deck and throw Anthony some pitches he can hit. And he got a couple hits last night, swung the bat very well. So I like that Jake Huff is swinging the bat really well and so Rod's going to be protected by Jake. Our lineup is going to be a tough, tough lineup one through nine right now. I think we can, if Ricky Osuna can swing it tonight, get on base in the nine hole. That's going to be a big key for us. But you know, Joe had a couple of bad at bats last night in the leadoff hole, but he's going to come back tonight and swing it well. That's not really a big concern of mine. I think our team's going to be very relaxed and just have a let's go have fun attitude instead of we have to win win type attitude. We do, but these guys are professionals and they're going to just be relaxed and come out and play. I mean, that's the approach I'm going to take and hopefully they're going to take the same. Let's look at the offense from the visiting team. They're ahead to nothing, but if you get two wins, you get to the fifth inning. That's an even matchup and you may have the advantage. I definitely think so. I mean, if we're home and we're tied, I mean that gives us the home field advantage. And I'd rather be at home than away just playing a one game series to go to the championship series. And so absolutely, if we can win two, you know, it gives us an incredible advantage going into game five of this thing. Let's talk about game three. You mentioned that pitcher that he can pitch well against the other team. Yeah, Victor Cepeda is a little bit different. I mean he's not, you know, we threw Bucky Buckles the first game who's a right handed thrower and he's got, you know, slider change fastball. And then we threw Jason Stocksdale against him who's a left hander and has a, you know, has a little bit of steepness to his ball and throws it downhill. And now Victor is coming in who throws a little bit three quarter and just a little bit different look than they saw yesterday. And so hopefully that little edge right there is going to help us out. But you know, it's just again, inning by inning trying to win every single game we can. We have Gabe Foster as our Longman in the pen tonight, you know, so if Victor has troubles in innings 1, 2, 3 or 4 or even 5 tonight, or maybe even extended tonight because Derek Foz won't be available. He threw two consecutive nights and he'll need a night off. So Gabe Foster might get some time tonight. I'd like to see Victor throw a complete game and have us win about 12 to 0. But if you could predict it, we wouldn't be sitting here. So Gabe's got to be ready. Mike Pascaliccio's got to be ready and it's nice to have a guy in the pen in Adrian Hollinger that, you know, can come in and shut things down. So, you know, it's just going to take a team effort. 21 guys going out there and giving their all, see what we can do tonight. That new pitcher looked like he could pitch in this league and pitch very well. Oh, I think so. I mean, he's been in Adrian's been in AAA and so he's got, he's been around a long time. He's got a lot of experience. He's one step below a veteran. He's what you call an LS4 Limited Service 4 in our league when you classify players. So he's got a lot of experience, pitched overseas, pitched in Taiwan and Mexico and he's been around. I would have no problem handing him the ball in the ninth inning with a one run lead and feeling very comfortable that we're going to get out of that with a win. No matter what happens, who is delivering the baseball seems to be the key. Yeah, the guy in the hill is going to be the key. There's no doubt about it. You know, Rich Linares, you almost have to tip your hat to him and say he gutted it up. We hit a lot of balls hard last night. He didn't have his best stuff. He elevated the ball in the zone, but we just, he kept us out of that key hit Bases Loaded where Toby Sanchez hit the ball up the middle. They were playing him up the middle. Probably if they were playing him normal depth, that would have been a single up the middle and scored two runs and so little things like that. Where Rich did a nice job last night, we need to reverse that tonight and get that luck on our side. I know we've talked so much about the pitchers. Is there something we haven't covered that needs to be included in that admiration of the pitchers who are going against this team tonight? Well, you know, it seems like Yeager has been a little hesitant to bring in guys from the pan. And so I think if you look from their point of view, the ability for their starter to go into the deep end of the game is probably a big deal for them where for us, we have Gabe Foster who's going to come out of the pen and I feel comfortable either way. If Victor can't go, then we can get him out early and use him in early tomorrow or Saturday and bring Gabe in. But if not, we're going to have a strong pin. I really think it's going to be evenly matched and it might be a little bit higher scoring than, than we've seen, but you know, we're going to go out there and play hard tonight. Gotta ask you one more question. You're missing a strong relief pitcher because his wife was giving birth. What's the situation? Well, I talked to, just through messages, talked to Adam Butler last night, actually this morning. I don't know what day it is really, but I got his message this morning and they still hadn't even gone to the hospital yet. And Adam's wife's having contractions, the baby's dropped and you know, all the signs that she's going to go to the hospital and have this baby, but it hasn't happened yet. And so that's the last we heard, about 12 hours ago. You know, hopefully we can win tonight or tomorrow and let Adam come back and help us out a little bit. There are some more important things than playing baseball is having a family. Oh, absolutely. You know, you have to put things in perspective. And playoffs or not, I mean, life goes on and, you know, we wouldn't bat an eye, obviously, at having Adam miss this and being home with his wife. This is a five game playoff series and he's got his entire life to spend with his family. And so we understand that. But at the same time, we would love to have him back here pitching for us. Congratulations on having the families in here. Good luck tonight. Thanks, Larry. Appreciate it. McCall. So I think that's going to enable us to, or at least Anthony to get better pitches. They're going to see Rod McCall on deck and they're going to think, I've got to go right at Anthony Lewis and give him some good pitches to hit because if I put him on basin, I've got to face Rod McCall. Jake Huff's really swinging it well, so I'm putting Jake behind Rod McCall to try to give him a little protection. Hopefully that's going to do the trick. It all comes down to when you get up there swinging the bat and doing the job. You got to be the man who's guessing what the balance should be on a particular day. Yeah, and that's been a little bit of the problem. I was talking to a couple players earlier when you don't have a set lineup, and that was my goal coming in. My goal was the last two weeks, get everybody rested, and then maybe the last 10 days or a week, try to get everybody in a set lineup where they feel comfortable. They know who's in front of them. They know when the guy wants to run well. Nick Frank cuts his hand, Joe Trippy has a hurt leg. Rod McCall gets an infection. We don't know. You know, it's hard to make a lineup when you don't have three of the guys in there that are going to be in there for you. So, you know, we're just trying to go by Phil and you know, what's. Who do we have? What nine guys do we have today and where are they best going to fit in the lineup? That's what we're doing. And hopefully tonight we're going to flip the coin the right way and it's going to land for us the right way we want it. We're just going to give a good effort though. I tell you that this matchup seems to be very well, let's talk one final note. What's your feeling going into this as the manager who starts late in the season but has a shot at it? Yeah, we definitely do have a shot. I mean, this is a series that we can definitely win. We need this game, though. I don't think we want to put ourselves in a situation where we have to win three straight. Although I do feel like we're much more comfortable at home and we feel like we can beat anybody at home. You know, we need this game tonight. The key is going to be Jason Stock still tonight. Really going in throwing strikes is probably the biggest thing. Not giving him base on balls because you can't defense that at all. Get ahead in the count, throw strikes and throw it where he wants to and be effective that way. Thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thank you, Larry. You know, it's what, 75 degrees, something like that here right now, so we're about 30 degrees colder than home. But I don't think the guys, I think they welcome the change in temperature. What's going to be neat is to get these guys up at home when they're going from 75 degrees up to 110. So that'll be nice on Thursday. You enjoy managing it this post season now? Oh, absolutely. This is what you look forward to. And again, we're excited to go. It's like a new season. We're 0 and 0. We don't have a losing record anymore. We're ready to go. I wish you luck and thank you for being with us. Thank you, Larry. I wouldn't put out there whether it's pinch hit or starting or coming out of the pen. So, you know, I'm happy with where we're at with all the injuries, it's been really tough to put and the lack of pen to put together two or three or four wins in a row. But again, we've been talking all along next Tuesday or Wednesday, that's when we're going to prove if we're a good team or not. And so we'll try to manage tonight and tomorrow to get to Tuesday and Wednesday. Thank you for being with us and good luck tonight. Thank you, Larry. That would at least be able to go up there and compete. You know, we've got basically nine or ten position players right now and everybody's got to play. So there's not many options off the bench. And with our bullpen, it's a little bit depleted. And so, you know, we might have one or two guys to go to that Are two if we're very lucky in a game. And so it's more challenging that way, deciding, okay, we got to throw in the white towel. Let's go with the position player, where last year, you know, we didn't have one or two games, maybe two games that we had to do that the whole year. I've done that five or six times this year already with our team. So, you know, I'm giving the same effort. I want to win every single game, but. But I realized with this personnel that we're going to have to put together pretty much perfect games to win games. And, you know, that's what we're striving for, I guess, is that perfect game to get us a W. I know one win would be great against Chico. Two games would give us a lot of confidence going into the playoffs. That may happen for you to get all of those. Thank you for being with us. Good luck tonight. Thanks, Larry. I can tell you one thing, the effort is going to be there by the coaching staff and the players on the field. Thanks, Larry. We proved that last year. You can do with that. Yeah. I mean, if you don't think you can win, then there's no reason being in this business at all. I think you have to go in knowing you're going to win. And I feel very confident, whether it's Yuma or Long beach, that we'll take one, if not two, at their place. Good luck and thank you for being with us. Good luck today. Thank you, Larry. Appreciate it. Going to be a good night tonight, no matter what. Congratulations on the success this year, and good luck. Thanks, Larry. And again, I could talk baseball all night long, but we'll try to go get them tonight. And we just need people to hang in there with us and come out next week to the games and we'll give it a good shot. Thank you. That's one of the things that managers find out in this league is that's part of the strength of the pitching staff. Yes. In order to win in this league, you got to have pitching, and it's tough to go by, as we're finding out with Scotty Davidson. You get those good pitchers and the organizations are going to want to pick them right back up. So you've got to know how to win and win consistently with an array of guys. You can't just put your whole staff on one guy. And so I think we've kind of balanced it out pretty good. We're looking good. As long as we keep our arms healthy. We've got A very good chance with our pitching staff going into the playoff. Talk about tonight, game number one, who's your starter? I think tonight is Foster and he's a guy that's shown a lot of improvement as of late. He struggled there for a while because of. He had. He just was one of those hard luck guys. He'd go out and throw the lights out of it, give up three or four unearned runs and we'd score one run and he'd get the loss. And so his record doesn't show really what he's done. And then he got a little frustrated and struggled a little bit and we put him in the pen and for the next three or four games he had three appearances, I think, and showed very. No one even touched him. He threw really well, had a little more velocity and was able to really work on a couple of the things he struggled with. And then he got the. With with the loss of Mike Smith, he gets the opportunity to come out and join that starting role again and had a great outing in Sonoma and showed what he's capable of. So we're looking forward to good things from him tonight. It looks like he's showing more confidence when he gets on the mount. Yeah, definitely. Going back to the pen and working on a couple things and then coming back with a renewed drive to be a better pitcher is really showing. He's a fastball slider guy who's working on a changeup. And if he can keep those things going and mix in an off speed pitch every now and then, he'll be very effective. One question that gets asked if every ball club is playing a doubleheader is, what about the second game? Is there a decision on both sides? Well, it's definitely taxing on your. On your bullpen and your pitching staff to throw. We've got to play four games in three days and being short on pitchers as it is, it gets tough. So we've got to hope that Gabe goes the distance. Basically, if he can go six innings to seven, we're sitting really good. And then we got to hope our. I think it's. I don't know for sure who's starting the second game tonight, but then we got to hope the same for that. Any other ball players in the middle of the lineup? There's some. Are they designated for starting first game or second game or both? No, pretty much at this time. If you play your starters the whole time, except for our catcher, I mean, that would be awfully tough on Huff to have to catch 14 innings in this heat. So we're going with Huff the first game and then Hiro Fujimoto will catch the second game and that's the only real change you'll see made due to a double header situation. I noticed one of your outfielders is missing in this first game. He's been injured, has been struggling a little. Yeah, we just found out last night Joe's quad problem has moved up into the hip flexor and it's a little more serious than we had thought. So we're kind of being forced to give him a good seven days off to let him rehab and give it some rest because obviously, once again, we're worried about the big picture and getting into. I mean, having everybody healthy into the playoffs is the number one goal. Now with the addition of Diaz, we feel pretty strong that we can win this second half with the lineup we do put on the field every day right now. So he may be the lucky addition to this team. Yes, he is. I mean, there's no question we're going to miss Joe. He's one heck of a player for the next seven days because we're counting on him for the playoffs. But Diaz is the type that's going to fill in really, really well for him and probably not skip a beat. The key tonight, as you look at this team, what's the key to get the wins in one game or both? Well, the key with our team is just having consistent at bats, not going up and going three pitches and down, which we've had a lot of our young guys do way too much of. When we get a situation to move runners up, we need to move them up and get them in just the situational stuff and then making the expected play. We don't expect our guys to go make every play diving play and get an out. If he does, great. But we've got to make the plays that are hit at us. As long as we can do that, not give him any extra outs and make the picture work. We got a very good shot to take both here. We're going to end it right there. Congratulations on the success so far. Good luck tonight. Thank you, Larry. Thank you.