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AL DIVISION SERIES: RED SOX VS ASTROSOctober 4, 2017Dustin PedroiaHouston, Texas - Workout Day THE MODERATOR: Take questions, please. Q. You had a couple days off. How are you feeling physically? Do you feel ready to go for the playoffs? DUSTIN PEDROIA: Yeah, I feel good. Ready to go. A lot of hard work from our training staff and strength coaches and everybody to get me ready, so I'm excited. Q. What has Chris Sale brought to this team? DUSTIN PEDROIA: Wow, he's been unbelievable since day one, not only just obviously the stuff he has on the mound but his presence in the clubhouse. The way he attacks every day, he's always trying to get better. He's a pretty special guy to play with and we're pretty excited to have him out there on the mound. Q. Obviously you've been the whole year without David Ortiz but this time of year is there anything maybe different with kind of you being the most veteran guy heading into the postseason with this seem? DUSTIN PEDROIA: No, obviously David was there for a long time and I think it was weird at the beginning, but now we have gone through a whole season without him and our team has formed our own identity. So we're not really focused on that, we're focused on trying to compete and win baseball games together and we're not thinking about anything else. Q. Kind of related to that question, you're coming up on 50 playoff games in your career. What's different the about the playoffs and what kind of advice can you impart on guys who haven't had that kind of experience? DUSTIN PEDROIA: The only thing, the playoffs, it's about anything you can do to help the team win. It doesn't matter what it is. If you lead off the game and/or whatever and you have a 15-pitch at-bat and you strike out, your 0-1 in the box score, but that at-bat is crucial to helping your team win. And that's what it's about, it's not about anything else. It's about doing anything you can, little things wise, backing up bases, doing one more thing than the other team that can help you win a baseball game. That's the playoffs. I like to think that our team plays like that every game throughout the season. So once the playoffs are here, you just go play and continue to do what you've done all year. So that's what a lot of our guys learned last year, it's the same game, it's just you got to come in the media room and talk before or you have practice days or things like that. But it's the same game. You just got to find a way to be one run better than the other team. Q. How do you pass that along to your younger teammates dating back to spring training and throughout the year in preparation for this moment? DUSTIN PEDROIA: They know. I think last year was a good learning experience for a lot of guys that went through losing in the playoffs. That's what you push for when you're working throughout the year is you look at the great teams, they make their own breaks and we're trying to do that. Q. How tough is Verlander and what will be some of the keys going against a pitcher like Verlander? DUSTIN PEDROIA: Yeah, he's very tough. Every pitch he has is a wipe out pitch. So you just got to battle, try to get a good pitch to hit and if you get it, you better not miss it because he can make it pretty tough on everybody. So try to get up there and grind out at-bats, obviously we faced him a lot before, some of us in the playoffs, he's tough. He's done it for a real long time and he's been one of the best at it. Q. How tough has this year been on you physically and did you ever have any doubt that you would be at this point right now still being able to play? DUSTIN PEDROIA: No, I mean it's a part of the game. Obviously I play a position where you hit the deck a lot, but mentally you just try to just block that out, know it's a part of the game, try to come back and do all you can to help your teammates. So I knew I would be in a position to help us here in this part of the year. Q. Second straight year for you guys where you're underdogs going into the series, having to start on the road. Do you think teams can embrace the underdog personalities and is that something you guys have embraced, do you think? DUSTIN PEDROIA: I don't know, I don't think any of us think it matters. It doesn't matter where we play, you're just going and competing. So I don't think anybody picks up a newspaper and says, oh, we're the underdogs or we're the favorites. We're just trying to do the best we can to win games and continue playing, because our team enjoys playing, so we want to keep it going. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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