World Series: Brewers Manager Pat Murphy answers questions

How are you? Where's Shalana? Is she not here? Did she quit? She's in here. She's all over the place. I thought you quit or something. Look at her. People are in, like, sport coat? Like, really? What are you doing? Making fun of Ken Rosenthal? Kurt, what are you doing? What? Harden Corn, how are you, man? Great to see you, Tom. Glad you're here. I didn't mean that as negative towards Rosenthal. He's not here, is he? He doesn't come to these peon things, does he? All right, all right, we'll start with Murph officially, uh, start down here on the left second row, huh? You're getting the first question, I am wow, you've come a long way. Thank you, thank you. This is your first, how many years you've been doing this? Uh, three? Nice. And you're already asking the first question. You don't feel a little bit guilty? Like, wait a minute, a lot of big names in this room now, a lot of like in your guys' business, there's a lot of, got to get in early otherwise I'm not going to get a shot. You're just doing it right. You're just saying screw it, I'm doing it. I've arrived. Absolutely. Started from the bottom. Now I'm here. Exactly. Merv, can you just talk us through all the factors you were weighing with Woodruff, putting him on the roster and just telling him and informing him of your decision? Yeah, I mean, it's something that he had kind of marked off when he came back from making the decision he's not going to have surgery. and he said, here's my throwing program, here's how it plays out, there's a shot if we're in the World Series that that's right about the time I can be ready. And I feel confident. So with that, we didn't think much of anything of it at the time. We had a job to do. We had our head down, and we watched him progress. Then we watched him throw, and then we watched him go out in lives. And the way he threw the baseball, well, it's better than it was earlier in the season as far as stuff. We know who the kid is. We know his, you know, that it's not going to be too much for him. This is what this kid's all about. So, and he's been around here for 10 years or whatever, and we've understood it. And we feel like there's a window where he can help us. And that was the whole decision. This isn't a, wow, we love Woody. He's great for the organization. Because he already said to us, I don't want to be a sympathy pick. I want to be a pick because I can help the team. And that was our, and then you go through all the things and say, you know, can he help us? And the answer is yes, he can definitely help us. Do you know yet if it will be at the beginning of games or coming out of the bullpen where he'll be able to help you? Yeah, one or the other. Confident in that. We'll stay in the second row and go to Adam. Murph, my question is sort of the same. Given his long history as a starter and given that he's not pitched in a game in a couple of months, he really could come in late in a game. Would you have worries about him warming up and coming in in the middle of a game? Yeah, all the things that would go into having him come into a game, we've taken care of in terms of the warm-up and the preparation for him doing that. I mean, there's a lot that goes into it, and he's confident in it, I'm confident in it, Matt Arnold's confident in it, and we're looking at it as, okay, there's a possibility we can bring him in the game or there's a possibility we can start a game. We'll go to Steve in the middle of the second row. I know you and Woody have said this isn't a sympathy pick, But just how good, having seen what he'd been through these last few post-seasons, how good did it feel to be able to tell him yesterday that you are on that? That is a great part of the story. And he took it like any other player getting told, hey, you're starting tomorrow or you're doing whatever. He didn't take it like, ah. He's like, got it. It's what he expected, and it's kind of cool how he did it. Go to Tyler on the right side of the middle. Hey, Tyler. How are you? Good, how are you? And in Misiorowski's start so far, we've seen a lot of foul balls, you know, teams getting the pitch count up. What does he have to do to avoid all those foul balls and to be more efficient in these starts? Yeah, he could throw worse, and then the foul balls would turn into line drives. But it's kind of comical that you think that they're fouling him off on purpose. You know, like, we're just doing this. Like, why wouldn't everyone do that on every at-bat and every pitcher would be at, you know what I mean? So it's not like it's easy to just, oh, they just had a plan that they're just going to foul pitches off. That's just not realistic. You know, they're trying to get there. That's why they're swinging. They're trying to barrel that ball, and they miss it a little bit. Okay, so with that, that means the ball is not hopping past them, you know, or the ball is coming out a little more visible. So they're getting to part of it, you know what I mean? It's still a strike, you know. It's not ideal, but it's part of the competitive part of baseball. You do that if you can. Just hang in there. It's like Jake Bowers, right? You just hang in there and have long ABs. But there isn't something in place like, wow, we're just going to fall off pitches. They can't get to them. That's why they fall off. Well, I mean, you can throw the ball better, throw it to a better location. Seriously. That ball's falling off because it's over here. When the one's right here sinking back from your neck into the top of the zone, Really tough to fall off, you know, so he's going to work on that, you know. Murph, we'll come down to the left side, second row. Murph, obviously it was a great story to hear that Woody made the lineup for the roster, but then on the other side, you had Chad Patrick, who was left off. A difficult decision, I'm assuming. How did that go, and what was the conversation with Chad Patrick? Yeah, very difficult. Very difficult. He's been a big part of our team this year. He was a huge part of our team last year and the postseason last year, and very difficult. How did it go? Probably not great on his end. It's not a great conversation. Murph, Tampa's game two starter, Rasmussen obviously cut his teeth in this organization. He wasn't in the majors long for the Brewers, but I was just wondering what you kind of remember of when he was up, if anything, and how you think he's developed here over the years. Yeah, I have history just because, you know, I know his college coach. His college coach is on our staff, Pat Casey, and he's raved about him. When Pat was still the head coach, he was raving about this kid. And Matt Arnold will tell you the story where I brought his name to Matt Arnold. They already had him on the list, but I brought his name and said, hey, look, I'm telling you this college coach is really good, and he knows this kid, and he's the right kid. So whether that helped or not, us taking him, but then having him in the organization, knowing what kind of kid he is, I mean, nobody's surprised this kid is super successful. Nobody's surprised. Come down to the twin strikers in the front. Yesterday we asked the players to use one word to describe you, and now we're going to ask you to use one word to describe the guys. Describe our guys? Yeah. One word. Relentless. I'm not going to ask you what they said because I'm going to tell you something, young people. What others say about you is none of your business. Okay? So people can talk smack about you. They can say nice things. I had a great friend tell me, disregard all good and bad opinions of others and know your own truth. Did they? I'm going to disregard all that. Put a run on the far right in the front. Hey, Ron. As much as you practice defense PFP for seven and a half months, is there a chance on stages like this with all the adrenaline pumping, the ball starts bouncing around on the fielders there's no question watch it and especially pitchers right because pitchers have all this adrenaline they're focused on their thing and then you're asking them to do something different hold a runner or field a bunt or whatever it might be that can freak people out and then you're asking them to make an intermediate throw while they practice it every day they don't practice in front of you know 40 plus thousand of people screaming. You can't hear yourself think. Difficult. Would you be more reluctant to put on a wheel play in a stage like this than on June 10th? Try to explain to everybody what a wheel play is. You're acting like we all did. Did you coach for a while so you've got your own wheel play? Our wheel play is very different than your wheel play. You're talking about send everybody on a bunt, crash everybody out of bounds and do that. And we've done that all year. So what do you want me to tell you? Are we going to do it or aren't we going to do it? You've got two in the third row on this side. Murph, leading into the last two series, because you had faced both... Stand up here. Let me see your suit, man. How old are you? How old are you? Nice. That's pretty well done. Were you the one I talked to about his clothing last year? Jack. How'd it work out, Jack? All right, good. Leading into the series against the Padres and the Dodgers, because you had faced both teams in August, there was a lot of talk about the familiarity between the two teams in the series. knowing that you haven't played the Rays, this Rays team, since late March or early April? How do you anticipate the lack of familiarity impacting the series? I don't know that it will impact the series but it makes it very different. Just going through it now for the number of days that we've known we're playing the Rays, you feel like you know them. But seeing them out there and getting that, it takes a minute. It's going to take a minute. Jack? Murph, this is a Tampa Bay pitching staff that didn't issue a lot of free bases during the regular season, Martinez, Rasmussen, they were both at the top of the league for being efficient and not issuing walks. Approach-wise, how do you handle those two guys and try to stay disciplined while knowing that you're probably going to see a lot of strikes? Right. No, that's the cat and mouse of the whole game, Jack. That's baseball one-on-one, you know what I mean? It's not early takes, non-competitive pitches, you know what I mean? It's being ready every single pitch. and then really discerning between balls and strikes and discerning between strikes to hit and strikes to be okay with. Now, that brings us to the next point where if they don't have pitches leaving the zone, now Rasmussen has that split change, whatever it is that's leaving the zone. If you can lay off those pitches, then there's a good chance you put balls in play. And if you're putting balls in play the right way, you don't have to hit it 110 every time, but if you put it in play the right way, you got a chance to acquire some bases. and you know so that that becomes more of a contact approach and that's okay now you can't try to do too much with those pitches because they use so many change-ups and so many off-speed pitches so it's a tough challenge very tough challenge i respect this team a ton murph we'll take two more we'll go to jason on the right we'll finish with jeff up on the fourth row of the left hey murph um you spent hundreds of nights managing in this ballpark coaching this ballpark Can you describe what makes it different, what makes it unique, what makes it special, and especially on nights like this one, the World Series in town? Yeah, it's people, you know, for sure. You think about people in this community and how proud they are to say they're Brewer fans and how supportive they've been and how they've come out to support the stars and the people that we have here. Kind of the relationship between the team, the organization, and the community. it's very easy it's very you know blended and it starts with our owner so when you think about stadiums you just end up loving it because it just it's just really consistent it's comfortable and these atmosphere post-season atmospheres are super loud and yeah guys love it here everybody says they love it here and the stadium makes a huge difference but the people in the stadium and make it even better. Jeff. Murph, you spoke to it just a little bit there, but there's a Sports Illustrated cover from 1982 that's got Lonnie Smith sliding into Robin Yount, and the caption just says, The World Series. That was the cover. That was the World Series for this organization forever. If you can name the only Ohio University basketball player ever on the cover of Sports Illustrated, right now, I will buy your flight home. Well, I have good news for you. I drove here, and there's no shot that's happening. Anybody have that answer? Walt Luckett. I've definitely heard of him. Look it up. That cover says, The World Series. And for this organization, that was The World Series. That changes here in a couple of hours. How have you sort of processed the feeling of that over the last week or so? And what do you have to do, if anything, to shut that off once the competing starts? Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know if I'm just getting old or what this is, but I haven't thought in those terms at all. I'm thinking about those 26 guys that are eligible to play. I'm thinking of, you know, the attack taking the field or the attack of how to stay relentless and resilient and play the game after a long layoff. I'm thinking of that's it. You know, like I'm not thinking of what this means. I sense what it means to the city and to the community and all that. That's awesome, but I can't get involved mentally, just all that, because it comes and goes. I want those players to enjoy it, but I want them to play good. You prepare to play good, you play good, and you treat yourself good. We'll have plenty of time to look back and tell stories and point fingers and do whatever we want to do at how great this was and laugh at this guy for what he did in this. We'll have plenty of time for that. But right now, it's about preparing to play a game. And then whenever they tell us we need to play again, we play again. And like I've always said, when they tap us on the shoulder and say, hey, hey, Murph, there's no more games, then you assess where you're at, be grateful, and move on. All right, thanks, Murph. We'll see you postgame. Good luck tonight. What's up? Thank you, guys. Love having you. Super. How did this all come about? What was this all about? How did you guys get this assignment? So do you have like a website? Instacart? So you guys keep coming up on Instacart and people say, what do they push that heart? You got Tic Tac too? I don't have Tic Tac.