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AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: BLUE JAYS VS ROYALS

October 20, 2015

Ned Yost

Toronto, Ontario - Postgame four

Royals - 14 Blue Jays - 2

Q. Did you get what you wanted from Chris Young?
NED YOST: I did. Chris Young threw the ball great. We got there in the fifth inning, and my mindset was with Donaldson, Bautista, those guys, I really didn't want them seeing Chris for the third time. But to get us into the fifth inning right there with the lead, he just pitched a great game. He had the one at-bat against Donaldson where he hit the double off of him. Outside of that I thought he pitched great.

Q. Alex Rios has been hearing it from the fans ever since he got here. Do you feel good for a guy to have a game like this in a setting like this?
NED YOST: He's had a number of really good games for us in the playoffs. But I don't know, I just felt that Alex was going to have a great day today. I told him before the game, You're going to have a great game today. I don't know why I felt it. But he sure did. The big home run, to give us the five-run lead and two more singles.

You feel really good because you know how hard Alex has worked to get to this point this year, with the broken hand and the chicken pox. He's never stopped working hard to get to the playoffs and in his first time in the playoffs he's doing extremely well.

Q. It's been happening throughout the Postseason, but today the table setters bunted a home run, and Esky and Zobrist have been hot the whole series. Address those guys.
NED YOST: Esky has been fantastic. Esky, Zobie, Lorenzo Cain, Morales has been really, really good. It's just you get to this point and what you need are guys to get hot and they have. They've been table setters. They've been run producers. It's been fun to watch them go to work every day.

Q. Could you tell us how Perez is doing tonight?
NED YOST: He's fine. He took a couple of tough foul balls, one off the collarbone, one off the chin. Once we got the ten-run lead, I thought let's get Drew in there and let Salvy have a little bit of a break. He'll be excited to go tomorrow, ready to go.

Q. I know you spoke about Alex Rios already. As the No. 9 hitter being so productive, how much does that speak to the depth you've been talking about through the lineup?
NED YOST: When you look at our lineup, you have Salvador Perez, Alex Gordon hitting 8, and Alex Rios hitting 9, there's no dead spots in that lineup. The sequence, the offensive sequence continues to flow from 1 to 9, and that's big. That's big. You don't get to a point where you're saying, Oh, man, we're at the bottom of the order, where the offense a rally will stop. These guys all have the ability to keep a rally going, which is big.

Q. I wonder what the threshold was with Alex Rios trying to figure out how much more he could keep going and expect him to kind of get it back. Was that ever getting to be a challenge for you, about how much more he could keep playing?
NED YOST: Maybe a little bit, but not much. You just keep watching them work. You keep watching them in practice and you see a lot of good things. And you know that if he can get his timing, that's going to transition into the game.

He's a professional. He's been a professional for a long time. He doesn't panic in at-bats. There's a lot of good things about his game that allows you to have patience with him.

Q. Before the game you said you don't believe in game-to-game momentum, but you must feel pretty good about the kind of roll you're on right now.
NED YOST: We do. We do. We feel good about -- I felt great going into this game, one, because we had Chris Young on the mound and I felt he would give us a really, really good performance.

We feel good. We like the way we're playing right now. Our offense has been really, really good. We have Volquez coming back tomorrow, our defense is always spectacular, and our bullpen is primed to go tomorrow, too.

We didn't have to use Wade. We have Danny Duffy if we need him for multiple innings tomorrow. Kelvin and Madson had short stints today, so they'll be ready to go tomorrow, and so will Hoch. We're in really good shape.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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