|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
NL DIVISION SERIES: NATIONALS VS DODGERSOctober 3, 2019Max MuncyWalker BuehlerLos Angeles, California - postgame 1 Dodgers - 6, Nationals - 0 THE MODERATOR: Questions, please. Q. Walker, you've had a lot of big performances during your days at Vanderbilt as well as in the College World Series and the Regionals. When did you first kind of get a taste for pitching in the big moment and realize you enjoyed it? WALKER BUEHLER: I wouldn't say that, I would just say that I think when you try and be simple and do what you've done all year and kind of control your heart rate. I think sometimes it helps to kind of embrace the atmosphere and kind of learning to do that I think has been the biggest thing for me and luckily it's played out all right for me. Q. For Max, your story, considering the A's released you, you came here, you won a World Series game with a home run last year, that 18-inning game, you win a game or give the pad to the game tonight. What do you think about the whole evolution of what you've gone through here and grown as a player, especially for the level of experience that you have. MAX MUNCY: Fun. I think I've documented the biggest changes I made was mental attitude towards the game. To me it's kind of been one of the biggest things is these are big games, they're big moments and you got to try to go out there and enjoy them as much as possible because you don't know how many there are going to be. And when you do that you tend to relax and just play the game. For me that's the key is just try to go out there and have fun and enjoy it. Q. Walker, in the fourth inning bases loaded, Honeycutt comes out, you have a quick talk, Cabrera comes up, you throw him two curve balls. Curious if it was related to the visit, if there was some sort of conversation that sort of led to those sort of decisions. WALKER BUEHLER: Yeah, I mean obviously I have a lot of trust in Honey and Will and what they see and there's a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes that we do that kind of leads to decisions we make and I'm not going to go into the details of it, but we felt good about where that pitch was for me and to him, so made a pitch and got out of it. Q. Max, Patrick Corbin's been tough on lefties all year, all of his career really. What makes him tough against left-handed hitters and what was key to your approach and the success you had against him today? MAX MUNCY: I think one of the biggest things is he has a really good ability to control his slider. He can throw it just in the zone early in the count and make you think you have a chance at it and then once he gets ahead of you he can expand off that. Tonight it just didn't seem like he had his command and we did a really good job of not chasing balls out of the zone. He gets a lots of chases. And we kind of saw he didn't have his command so the biggest thing was try to keyhole him a little bit and feel like we did a good job of that. That's what makes him really tough against lefties, just the pretty rare ability to control the slider and put it wherever he wants. Q. Walker, at what point did you discover sort of the delivery the mechanics that you were looking for, the rhythm and how easy or difficult is it for you to sort of keep it constant throughout an outing like that? WALKER BUEHLER: Obviously I talked to you guys last week about kind of the tinkering I was doing and trying. Last week I tried to throw every pitch as hard as I could and those things tend to free you up a little bit. If you have a little bit of success when you feel like you're not doing everything the way you're supposed to, then when you go back and try and do everything the right way sometimes you can be a little bit better and just kind of a reset button for me and it worked out well for us tonight. Q. Max, when you have a late season setback with the broken wrist and a quick turnaround time with your return and going into the postseason how do you sort of reset and get back and have a performance like you did tonight? MAX MUNCY: I think one of the biggest things is your mental attitude towards it. It sucked, you're missing the end of the season, trying to get ready for playoffs, but you have to try and take bright sides out of it and one of those things was you're getting some rest that a lot of guys aren't getting. You're going to feel a little bit fresher going into the postseason. Yeah, you want those at-bats, you want to feel your timing is there, but thankfully I feel like I had enough at-bats going towards the end of the season that I felt ready for it and just try to look at the bright side on things. Q. Walker, you reference the earlier learning to embrace the big moment. When in your career would you say you learned to do that? WALKER BUEHLER: I didn't really pitch in big games in high school. Obviously you have your small rivalries and stuff like that in Lexington, Kentucky, but you get to college and throw in some big games, and I don't know if there's a singular moment, I think Max could kind of attest to that, I think it's just a compounding affect of playing in games and there's certain feelings that you get, nerves, adrenaline, things like that, that you do them enough times they're just normal, they're just different, but they're normal at the same time, they don't overwhelm you. And I think it's just that compound affect of being in there a few times where you know what's going to happen and you know how to kind of use it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|