Oct. 30 Joe Maddon postgame interview

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Joe Maddon.Q. An interesting last couple of innings there. Is that just a situation, elimination game, nothing left to lose here, let’s roll it?

JOE MADDON: Of course. You’ve seen a lot of that during the course of the playoffs. It’s something you can’t normally do during the season without beating somebody up too badly. But I talked to Chappy before the game. He was aware of being ready in the 7th inning. So we had that all in play. Jonny did a great job. I just felt in talking to him that it was the right time to get him out. He was pushing pretty hard there to get those outs with the base runners, et cetera. So before the game, it was my intention to use CJ as a bridge, if we can, to get to Chappy. And the Napoli-CJ match-up I like a lot. It ends up being a single. But don’t understatement how important that play was that Zobrist made keeping that a single. A lot of times that would have turned into a double. That was a great play by Zo. Eventually we kept them from scoring. Chappy came in and did something, I guess, he’s never done before. So, yeah, there’s all kinds of drama out there. When you have a guy like that that can pitch that many significant outs in the latter part of the game, it’s pretty cool.Q. To follow that up, was your mindset that it’s Chapman, eight outs or bust?

JOE MADDON: Oh, yeah, it was. That was our best opportunity. I thought right now based on the bullpen usage recently, he’s actually kind of fresh. He hasn’t been overused in the last part of this season nor throughout the playoffs. So, again, with him, like a lot of relief pitchers, late-inning relief pitchers you want to talk in advance of the moment. We did. So he was definitely aware of what may happen tonight.Q. When Bryant and Rizzo hit the Bauer fastballs back to back, was that the offensive epiphany you were looking for?

JOE MADDON: Yeah, I loved it, man. You could see what happened after that. They kind of put their pitcher on the ropes a little bit. We had better at-bats. We got our three runs. Yes, all of that. That’s kind of what happened in Los Angeles where all of a sudden we got that one big blow. It’s incredible when you do that what it does to your team and what it does to the opposition pitcher. It’s just part of the game. So you have to be able to punch and counter-punch all the time, and we were able to do that tonight. The three runs held up beautifully.Q. Those of us that have been here all year know the deal, but for the nation to see what Anthony can do with the glove on the biggest stage, how vital has he been for your defense?

JOE MADDON: He had an incredible evening. The pop-up, the picks, the dive. If Chappy had covered first base, there would have …

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