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NL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: DODGERS VS CUBSOctober 14, 2016Jon LesterChicago, Illinois - Workout Day THE MODERATOR: First question, please. Q. Those of us who have been around the team this year have seen how well you've pitched but we have also seen just how more comfortable you seem to be with the team, the city, I don't know, maybe the media, but is that something that was a gradual process or maybe that started happening last year, or did you come to Spring Training feeling different than you did last year? JON LESTER: I think it was a gradual process. You get thrown into a city with all these -- I talk about expectations, but expectations on your back, and you want to live up to those, not only as a player but as a teammate and somebody that's involved in the city and the community. So, there was a lot of things last year. Getting settled in the new place, figuring out what's going on here, the travel and the teams, all that stuff. So, obviously your teammates are first and foremost, and getting to know them. And so, yeah, you spend a full year together and you grind through that season and you make the playoffs, you come back in the spring. I mean, we had, what, two new guys come in? Three new guys? One that I already knew. So, yeah, you're obviously going to feel more comfortable that second year as opposed to just getting thrown into that first year with a whole new atmosphere in front of you. Q. You obviously played with Adrian Gonzalez and you saw what he can do when he gets hot. So far it's been a little bit of a slow season and for him. From your perspective and the perspective of your pitching staff, how important is it that you keep him in check? JON LESTER: Yeah, he's obviously a big part of that lineup. He has been for a while. You really have to be careful with a guy like that because really only one -- one swing, one at-bat can change his whole series around for him. I know how quick he can get hot, and that's definitely a guy that you don't want to get hot, just with him being left-handed and kind of adding a little more dimension to their lineup. So, yeah, obviously he's been a big RBI guy for along long, long time. So when those situations come up, we got to make sure that we bear down and make good pitches against him. Q. What does David add to this team and how much fun has it been to watch him have the kind of season that he's had both on and off the field? JON LESTER: Who? Q. David. JON LESTER: Oh, no, it's been good. I think the biggest thing that everybody in that clubhouse loves is that he's getting the respect that he deserves. That's a hard position to fill for a lot of years. He's been able to do it on a lot of different teams. It's not an easy thing to be a backup in anything, and every day he shows up like he's an everyday player that's a superstar of the team. So, that's hard to do. It's hard to bring it every day. He's the heartbeat of our clubhouse. He keeps us going. He keeps the young guys in check. He keeps us older guys in check. He can communicate with everybody. I think he's a good relayer to the front office and to the coaching staff for guys that maybe have a little bit harder time communicating with those people. So he really does it all, handles the media really well, as far as his own personal stuff, and then also when it comes down to the team. So, there's a lot of things that are going to be placed on people's shoulders when he leaves, and hopefully they have learned a few things along the way from him on how to handle all this stuff. And when he's gone, he will definitely be missed. But hopefully we'll be able to fill his shoes for the rest of us as opposed to just one guy. Q. Pitchers have always said or many pitchers say they look at the flags here on the day they're going to pitch. Do you, and does it matter to you? JON LESTER: I mean, obviously you never want to show up here at Wrigley and see the wind -- the flags blowing straight out at 30 miles an hour. But, at the same time, you have to worry about making pitches regardless. So, that's something that you can't control and try not to worry about it. Obviously it's in everybody's face and they know and they see, but at the same time you have to try to kind of drown that out and just really focus on trying to keep the ball down and keep it in the infield and try to keep your outfielders bored as best you can out there. Obviously, when the wind's blowing in here, it plays like a completely different park. But that's stuff you can't control, and try to worry about the things you can and continue to execute pitches. Q. It's worked out perfectly for you to start both of these two series. What does it mean to you and the team to get the ball rolling and start the first game? JON LESTER: Obviously for me it's a great honor. Especially with the staff that we have. To get picked again to go number one, that's really a cool honor. Our staff has been really, really good this year, and I think that, really, if you put all of our names in a hat and pulled one out, I don't think you could go wrong. So, it's a huge honor, especially for an organization like this, to get the ball again and try to go out and give us a good start, like last time, and give us a chance to win and see where we're at at the end. We know this is going to be a long series, so hopefully we can get it going in the right direction tomorrow. Q. (Question about curses.) JON LESTER: I don't know, I wasn't there. I know just by kind of being an outsider looking in it's pretty crazy before all that stuff happened as far as -- I think the biggest thing is is just everybody kind of waits for something to happen as opposed to just sitting back and enjoying the game and seeing what happens. There's a lot of -- turned around in the 9th inning and look to some Cubs fans in San Francisco, there's a lot of long faces. And nobody in that dugout was ready to give up yet. So, we just kept grinding. And I think that's what you have to do, even as a fan I think you just have to kind of grind along with our team. Like I said before, we're going to make mistakes. Stuff is going to happen. It's baseball. It's part of the game. And like I said before, it doesn't mean it's a curse or it's a black cat or a goat or whatever else it is, it's us making physical mistakes and we're going to move on and move on to the next moment and hopefully we're able to have that next moment and do better. So, I think the biggest thing is for us, for me, the day that I'm not pitching -- I'm a fan, too. So you got to just keep being into the moment and really just kind of enjoy where we're at and see where it takes us. Q. Are there some similarities facing the Dodgers in the Giants, thinking a lot of left-handed bats and the Giants seemed pretty aggressive? Where would the Dodgers maybe rank in that scale, having faced them? JON LESTER: I don't know. I think every team has its own unique identity. I think the Giants have the ability to kind of flip the script on a pitcher a little bit and be patient and then come right back to being aggressive. I haven't really seen the Dodgers a lot. I know we played them, but it's hard to analyze being left-handed as well. It's a -- watching a righty pitch against them, they may approach that completely different than when they face me. So the two games that I pitched against them, the one they came out swinging, and then the one they tried to get their pitch early and then they worked the counts. I remember out there there was a lot of deep counts, a lot of foul balls. So, I think every team has its own identity, and I think certain teams are able to kind of flip it a little bit on you as far as their approach and that sort of thing. So we'll kind of see where they're at. Like I said against the Giants, they were really aggressive against me here in September, and then the other night they -- it was like they came out aggressive and then kind of lulled through the middle innings and maybe worked a little bit and then got aggressive again. So we'll see what they do and we'll make adjustments off that as we go. Like I keep saying, it's that fine cat-and-mouse game of being a pitcher. Q. What do you think you guys learned from last year's NLCS against the Mets that maybe has you better prepared for this series? JON LESTER: Just playing in it. Really. You could kind of see it in this last series with us, like I said, I think last year's team probably would have not won that Game 4 out there. So I think that that's a big step for us. I think the biggest thing is just being on that stage, being in that moment of the NLCS last year. And I think it left a lot of bitter taste in guys' mouths as far as how far we had come that season to get to that point and then really not even put up a fight. I mean, those guys really dominated us and as far as the pitching staff and really a couple of their hitters. I think we all kind of learned, especially for me and the pitching staff, is kind of identify the people that are swinging the bats, and we'll have a different approach against those guys. We basically let Daniel Murphy beat us last year. So I think looking back on that, if we can take that back and go back to that time and kind of sit down and then talk about it some more, we might have had a different approach. So I think that being in that moment and learning from that, moving on to this one, and I think a lot of guys are just in a better place. Like we said earlier, a lot of guys were new last year, not as comfortable as they are this year, so that should help a lot more as well. Q. Last two years you guys have played well in the postseason and you haven't had Anthony Rizzo having one of those weekends or weeks like he's had many of, is that sort of a good sign for you guys? And how has he handled -- how did he handle the NLDS? JON LESTER: Man, I thought that Tony handled it fine. Any time you struggle, it's going to be tough. Especially a guy like that, that's been through everything here. He's lost a hundred and he's won a hundred. So, that's two completely different seasons and all that. So, I think now the cool part about this year -- or this time of year, I should say, is now he goes back to zero. Everybody is back at zero. So it doesn't matter if he got -- I don't know how many hits he got in the DS, but doesn't matter anymore. Now we're back to zero. And we're in the CS. So everybody's back to square one. We'll start over, and it's kind of like that clean slate. When you get to the season and you get to the postseason you start all over. Doesn't matter what kind of season you had. So, I think that says a lot about our team, though. One of our big horses isn't swinging the bat well and we got guys ahead of him and below him that are picking him up. Javy had an unbelievable series both offensively and defensively. And really almost carried us. K.B. I think swung the bat pretty quiet as far as the media attention. I thought he had a lot of good at-bats, and had the one big homer for us. So, I think there's a lot of guys in that, in our lineup that haven't hit their stride yet, which is good, hopefully they do it. And if some of those other guys drop off a little bit, we'll have some other guys to pick them up. Q. What was it like pitching in front of this defense this season? JON LESTER: It was awesome. Just seemed like every start they got better. Last year we struggled a little bit defensively. I think just with the youth that we had, guys -- like I said before, you go back to guys' first season here, and all the expectations. Kris Bryant is supposed to save the world last year for us, and that's a lot to put on a 23- or 24-year-old, whatever he is. Addie is supposed to be the next Ozzy Smith and all this other stuff. So I think this year guys are just a lot more comfortable. They have a full year under their belt. They come into Spring Training and know they have the job and all this stuff. I think there's just a lot of positives there that put these guys in a better position to succeed, and they have done a great job. Insert Javy Baez wherever you want, and he seems to make a spectacular tag or play or throw. Seems like it's every night. So I think I love our versatility. I think it helps our guys being able to play different positions. So we just keep getting better. That's I think kind of a scary part for the rest of our league for the next however many years, before these guys get to free agency and all this other stuff, that we have got a really young team that is just continuing to get better at the plate and defensively. So, it should be fun. Q. Can you talk about the Lackey, Heyward, and Zobrist component and how that's helped both on and off the field this year? JON LESTER: Yeah, I think any time you add championship-quality players, two of those guys have rings, I think J-Hey is probably one of the most if not more professional guys I've ever played with. You talk about Anthony Rizzo struggling during the DS, I mean, J-Hey grinded his butt off this whole season. We all know in that dugout what he's capable of doing offensively, and he does, too. And he wants to do it every time he picks up a bat. For whatever reason, he squared up a lot of balls this year that were hit at people and you never saw him pout, never saw him give up. If anything he almost worked too hard this year to make it better. So, you add those three guys, you add the professionalism of it, you add different personalities, which I think makes that -- those additions even better. You got Lackey who is a lot more intense and demanding, J-Hey who is kind of the quiet one, goes about his business and leads on the field, and Zo's kind of the quiet one, too, and I think he goes about it a little bit different way compared to J-Hey and Lack. So I think it's kind of like a three-headed monster with those guys. And J-Hey is still young, which is hard to believe. This guy's 27 I think, 26. So, he can communicate with those young guys really well. They look up to him even though they're the same age. I think that really helps, kind of breaks that gap between guys like me and Lack and Zo to the younger guys and help bring them along. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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