	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS VS YANKEES

October 7, 2019

Kyle Gibson

Minneapolis, Minnesota - pregame 3

Q. How are you taking this all in as though this could be -- whenever this ends could be it for the twins. How are you taking this in and living in the moment and kind of just enjoying this time?
KYLE GIBSON: Doing exactly that. I think everybody here is trying to do the best to make everything out of every moment you can. You never know when you're going to get the chance to win a division, and being a five-game series, and there's a lot of things that can go wrong in a season.

I'm trying to do just that, go out there and enjoy every moment and live in the moment and just whatever happens happens.

Q. Hey, Kyle, assuming that the team does not advance beyond this series, how satisfied will you be with both the season you had personally and the season that the team had with 101 wins?
KYLE GIBSON: Yeah, I think we accomplished a lot this year. I think we exceeded expectations of a lot of people. We played a lot of really good baseball and had a lot of young guys take a lot of steps forward and really advance in their career and put themselves in a spot where this team's going to be really good for the next couple years.

I don't know that there's any level of satisfaction that comes out of winning 100 games and winning a division and getting knocked out in the first round. I'm not sure how much satisfaction is actually in that, but there's only one team that's going to come out at the end that's a World Series champ. If every other team looks at their season as a failure because of that, there's 29 failures.

So I don't think that's how this team is going to look at it. Obviously, we're focused on tonight and moving on past that, but I don't think it would be fair to the guys in the locker room who played hard all year and accomplished a lot to say this was a failure just because we lost in the first round.

Q. Kyle, you guys win tonight, and there's no word on who's going to start tomorrow. The indications are the bullpen will be heavily involved. How much would you relish the opportunity to get back out there in this series?
KYLE GIBSON: Absolutely. From the get go, I told Rocco I want to pitch whenever I can, and I would whenever I can. Yeah, I definitely want to get back out there. First postseason opportunity didn't go how I thought it was going to go and didn't get the results I wanted, but it was a lot of fun going out there and competing against those guys again. Hopefully, I can get the chance, either tonight or tomorrow, to get back out there and have a little different result.

Q. A teammate said that the clubhouse the last few days and even today have been pretty much the same as they have been all year. What have you observed from the guys that are usually stone-faced are stone-faced, everyone that jokes is joking. Everyone has been pretty much the same. How have you seen that through your eyes?
KYLE GIBSON: Yeah, it's pretty status quo, I think. We're not really a team that gets too uptight about this situation. Maybe it's because we have young guys that haven't been in that situation, but we also have a lot of veterans who have. And Nellie's words before we left New York is, listen, there's no need to get down on yourselves, no need to quit, no need to give up. We can still do this. We've only lost four games one time this year and we've won three in a row a lot of times this year.

And we're pretty confident. I don't think we have any reason not to be. Yesterday's workout, as optional as it was, there were some guys that didn't show up, and I think that's great. We've got to treat it like it's any other game. If you show up and make this one game bigger than any other, that's when you start putting more pressure on yourself and end up coming out and playing tight and trying to do too much.

Q. I was going to ask you about what Nelson said to you guys after the second game. What did you think of the timing of that, and how did that come about? If you can just describe it.
KYLE GIBSON: Nellie's done that a few times this year. Right before the Cleveland series there in September, he had a really good meeting. The other day, Rocco just kind of told us right at the end the plan getting back, and the workout being optional and everything, and Nellie just stood up and took the floor and said, listen, guys, there's no need to get down on ourselves, no need to give up or quit or look any different at ourselves. We're still a really good team, and we still have a chance to do this. When a guy like that speaks, everybody listens and perks their ears up and takes it in because he's been in a lot of different situations and maybe some situations that have a lot more pressure than this one.

Everybody, I think, is ready to go, and they took those words to heart.

Q. Kyle, you waited a long time for this entire experience. Even if it didn't come in the manner you may have expected or if your first appearance didn't go the way you wanted, have you still allowed yourself to savor and appreciate it all?
KYLE GIBSON: Yes, absolutely. I think there's a lot of things, as you live life more, you try not to take it for granted, and you learn from mistakes maybe when you did take it for granted -- health, just being able to do this. I think this year has renewed my sense of making sure I don't take things for granted. You just never know when your last outing is going to be, you never know when your last game is going to be.

I've said all along, if you can't enjoy watching this team, and when I'm not pitching or pitching poorly, if you can't enjoy this team, then you're not watching the right team. This has been a fun team to watch play, and hopefully I get a chance to be a part of it here for a lot more games and get to watch them win a couple more games.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297