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AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BLUE JAYS VS ROYALS

October 20, 2015

John Gibbons

Toronto, Ontario - Postgame four

Royals - 14 Blue Jays - 2

Q. What's the concern level right now with your bullpen going into tomorrow and tomorrow will be all hands-on deck with Price?
JOHN GIBBONS: Yeah, we'll be fine tomorrow if we get a good outing by Marco. We expect to.

And it was ugly today, no doubt about that. That's all I can say.

Q. Did R.A. just basically have nothing that he could go to and no adjustment? Did you talk to him between the 1st and 2nd?
JOHN GIBBONS: Looked like there was a lot of movement on it, at least from where I was standing, but he had trouble commanding a little bit. And it was at a point in the game, you've seen him so often, he may struggle early, and kick it into gear with five shutout innings. You've got to decide is this game going to get out of hand here or make the move and try to hang around.

Unfortunately, Liam did a heck of a job. But that was his limit, really. It was borderline abuse, anyway, from what he's used to. He held it in check and then it really got away there in the 7th beyond.

Q. You've been at this a long time, but I wonder, does experience take away the sting of watching that 7th, 8th, and 9th?
JOHN GIBBONS: No, not at all. I've seen a lot of those games, regular season games. You don't expect to see them in games this big. But it happens. Really, we struggled early and we held them in check. We got close.

The key was down three runs, you don't really want to use your go-to guys, because there's a chance they will pitch three days in a row. If it pulled closer you might have seen one of those guys. But figured to get some outs along the way. We weren't able to do that at all basically.

Q. You guys have bounced back from a number of different losses, tough losses over the course of the season. This is probably your worst loss of the year, given the stakes and the situation. Can you describe the challenge recovering for tomorrow?
JOHN GIBBONS: There's no doubt it's a big challenge. It's a do or die game for us. But they do it all year. I think these guys will let this one go and they'll show up to play tomorrow. The key is get a good outing out of Marco and we'll see where it takes us. Not a more important game this season, really. I know these guys will be ready.

Q. You addressed this with Hendriks' workload, would he be unavailable tomorrow?
JOHN GIBBONS: Yeah, I don't think you'd probably see him tomorrow. He did some kind of job, really. It really kept the game close, gave us a shot. When it was time to come out, though, it got away.

Q. You said you didn't want to rest some of your bullpen. With Pennington, everybody else, there were no options?
JOHN GIBBONS: Well, all that was left was Osuna and Sanchey. You weren't going to use those guys. They'll be good for a couple of innings each tomorrow. Loup got a call and he had to head to the airport and head home. That's why he wasn't available today. We were in a bind.

Q. Was part of the thinking there, did you want to stay away from Mark as long as you possibly could to have him ready for tomorrow as well?
JOHN GIBBONS: Yeah. He's been so good, he's been one of our go-to guys. It was getting so ugly. You try to have a little pride anyway. I hate to use position players, maybe we made history today, I don't know. A big game like that, a position player pitches.

But we were trying to stay away from him, he had a tough time.

Q. I think I know the answer, but I wanted to confirm. With Loup gone and probably not back tomorrow, you don't have any option to replace him, do you?
JOHN GIBBONS: I'm not sure exactly on the rule. The injury rule, I don't know if it covers his circumstance. I'll need to find out about that. But you would think it would, but I don't know that for a fact.

Q. I know you've addressed this before, but Volquez in his news conference today said Cueto had talked about stealing signs in centerfield. Just for the record, could you just address that?
JOHN GIBBONS: I have nothing to say on that. We've heard that before. Really, we've got a good hitting team. They don't need that. That's kind of going around the League.

Really, any team you come up against, there's questions whether guys are tipping signs. That's been in the game forever. I don't think it's just exclusive to one ballclub.

That's part of it. Any time you score a lot of runs they look for that, but we have some pretty good hitters.

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