Q. I guess you couldn’t ask for more from Ryu tonight, getting through six innings for you?
DON MATTINGLY: No, Hyun‑Jin was a lot of things we talked about before, pretty amazing that a guy can be off that long and be that sharp. Have the touch and feel that he does when he uses his change‑up and breaking ball and be able to look at both sides of the plate.
He had the one little inning in the 3rd, it looked like it was getting a little rough. After that he got out of that jam and settled down really, went farther than we thought. We thought going five would be good. But really, gives us an extra inning, gives us a chance.
Q. Did Elbert’s lack of experience in a close game in this situation, a Major League level, play into this? He hasn’t pitched in many close games like this at all.
DON MATTINGLY: No, not really. At this point when we put him on the roster he’s been throwing the ball good. When we decided to put him on the postseason roster, he’s there to get lefties out.
That’s why we put the roster together the way we did. We knew the Cardinals were a team with some good left‑handed hitters, and we wanted to try to be able to neutralize them. Obviously to this point we have not been able to.
Carpenter has just continued to pound on us. Jay seems to hit our lefties.
We’ve just got to continue to maybe search a little different avenue to try to get these guys out. They’re the guys that seem to be hurting us as much as anybody.
Q. What’s your level of confidence with Kershaw and Greinke to pitch the next two games if there are two games?
DON MATTINGLY: Anytime we put Clayton Kershaw on the mound we feel pretty good. That being said, we’re in a tough game. We’re in St. Louis.
But I think this club has been a club that’s bounced back every time we’ve had any kind of trouble and lost a tough game. For us it’s a matter of winning one game with Clayton Kershaw on the mound. We feel pretty good about that. And we’ll move forward. We don’t worry about the Game 5; we worry about Game 4.
It will be a fairly quick turnaround with a 4 o’clock start tomorrow. So we can’t sit around and do any complaining. We’ve got to be ready to go.
Q. With Puig, he’s had eight strikeouts, seven in a row at one point, and broke it up with a triple. We talked a little bit about this yesterday. What do you do to talk him through this, to get him focused and centered on what he needs to do?
DON MATTINGLY: Well, we continue to talk with him. And you don’t want the situation to be too big for him. Obviously we know it’s emotional. We try to sit him down, continue to talk to him about playing baseball. And even though there’s a lot of people waving towels and things are a little different obviously in the playoffs, I’ve said it all year long and many, many times, we have to simplify. It’s still baseball. Same game you played in Cuba, same game you played all season long. It’s baseball.
Even though there’s a lot on the line, we have to be able to take that part out of it, cut it down to: It’s baseball.
Q. What was Lackey doing well out there against you guys today?
DON MATTINGLY: Well, John’s a guy that usually hits both sides of the plate, and he has a good breaking ball. I thought Dale was very generous. We had a lot of guys complaining about the strike zone. And we felt like he was really generous. And it puts you in a bind. You keep giving pitches, changing counts. Obviously you can’t go too far with it. But real generous.
Q. How much can you expect from Kershaw pitch count‑wise tomorrow. Will it be more limited because of the three days rest?
DON MATTINGLY: We’ll pay really close attention tomorrow. So I think the last time out, I think he was around 90, 90 or so, in the Atlanta game, without any issues in that game. So we’ll see how it goes.
And a lot like Hyun‑Jin today. You’re not going to expect him to go out there and throw 115 or 120. Probably wouldn’t look at Clayton like that either. Not do anything to put him in harm’s way.
So we’ll all be playing close attention as the game goes.
Q. What did you think of the pitch to Wong, give him a lot of credit to go out and take that out?
DON MATTINGLY: Well, we’re going to give credit. And we kind of know what ‑‑ we feel like we know where to go with these guys. We haven’t been able to get it there, and that’s obviously not where we want to go. For me, he’s dangerous, he’s got bat speed. He’s a low hand guy. And there’s places to get him, you’ve got to have that combination.
He’s a dangerous cat for me, he’s got bat speed and can hit a fastball, for sure. You’ve still got to get the ball to certain parts of the plate and we haven’t been able to do it.
