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MLB WORLD SERIES: NATIONALS VS ASTROSOctober 22, 2019AJ HinchHouston, Texas - pregame 1 Q. There have been reports and confirmations of a member of your front office and his conduct in the clubhouse after the American League Championship Series. Did you have any prior knowledge of that and what's your overall reaction to that? AJ HINCH: I didn't know until the story came out and I read it about the same time a lot of people did. You know, obviously my reaction, I'm very disappointed for a lot of reasons. It's unfortunate, it's uncalled for. For me as a leader in this organization down here in the clubhouse, on the field, I take everything that happens in the clubhouse to heart. No one, it doesn't matter if it's a player, a coach, a manager, any of you members of the media, should ever feel like when you come into our clubhouse that you're going to be uncomfortable or disrespected. So I wasn't there. I don't know to the extent of what happened. I read, like everybody. I haven't talked to every single person in the organization, as you would expect. I've been knee-deep in the Washington Nationals. But I think we all need to be better across the board, in the industry. I understand why it's a question today, and I appreciate it. But I was disappointed. Q. Yordan had such a great year. How important was it for him coming up to have the support system of a couple of his countrymen and a lot of others in the clubhouse? AJ HINCH: Yeah, any young player that comes up is immediately looking for where he belongs in a clubhouse, in a big league setting. They've never been here before, they don't know how to deal with it. They don't -- they kind of don't know their place yet. So when somebody like Yordan can come up and immediately have a comfort with an idol like Yuli Gurriel, I think we underestimate the impact he had in Cuba with him, and Aledmys DÃaz. Our Latin culture, in general, is very, very strong. You can turn to Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa. We have such a fun group for him to acclimate to. And then when you look around the room, other players that he had come up with, it's really a blessing to have that stability from the very beginning. Now, he's still got to go out and perform, he's got to pick the right pitches to hit, he's got to feel like a big leaguer for first time. But there's no doubt that that comfort level in the clubhouse, off the field, how to handle everything from interviews to the attention he was getting, I think his success in that can be partially attributed to his comfort with the Cuban community in our clubhouse and also just the great players that had come up with expectation before. Q. Could you address why Chris Devenski is on the rosters and how Pressly is doing. AJ HINCH: We made one change in the roster and that was Chris Devenski, took Bryan Abreu off. While we're very excited about Abreu's future and the potential of his impact, we felt like Devo's experience, he's been there, done that, he's pitched in the World Series before. His weapons are really good; fastball, his changeups been good, his slider's been good. The comfort in knowing that the moment is not going to be too big for him. His versatility, how I can use him, some of the matchups stuff that we like against the Nats started to trend towards him being the guy that we included. I also liked the work he did between the Division Series and now, albeit only a couple of bullpens and a live BP session or two, he took it very serious to keep himself ready. I loved his reaction when I told him yesterday. It was just kind of standard business, just like you normally would expect. I think he expected to have an opportunity. He was grateful. But Devo's been here a long time and he's very trustworthy. I know he did the work to be ready for a moment like this. Q. Talk about Pressly. AJ HINCH: Pressly is healthy. The incident the other night on the field was scary for all of us, most notably to him. He was in a little bit of pain. He was demonstrating a lot of different things in between innings trying to stay in the game, which gave me confidence after the game to say I thought he'd be fine. His work yesterday, threw a bullpen, was all systems go. So I think we cleared that. Hopefully there's not another incident like that. It was an awkward play. It would have taken a lot more to keep him off this roster. Q. Going back to Yuli Gurriel, last series he hit quite a few balls that didn't fall for hits then he comes in Game 6 and hits a home run. Can you talk about his approach and what he brings to this lineup, whether he's 1 for 12 or 8 for 12? AJ HINCH: He's one of the most dangerous hitters on our team, and that's among a lot of dangerous hitters. And contact's your friend in this game sometimes. As we've talked a lot about strikeouts over the last few years and a lot about OPS and the power, and Yuli does all that but still has an enormous high contact rate. He puts the ball in play and he can hit virtually every pitch, just indicated by his homer the other day was a neck-high fastball that very few guys can keep fair or get in the air or hit it out of the ballpark. His presence in our lineup is huge. I've been able to move him all around. He's hit very high in the order, he's hit in the middle of the order. He's hit towards the bottom of the order, and the at-bats remain consistent, the threat remains consistent. If you ask around the League, a lot of managers, a lot of pitchers, a lot of players, will talk about the fear they have when he comes up to bat because he can cover every pitch depending on what his plan is. And that will be critical this series when you're facing such top-end pitching. Q. What are the challenges of navigating a postseason series with no left-handed pitchers and do you wish you had one? AJ HINCH: Doesn't matter what I wish for. We have our roster and I love our roster. And I love the fact that we have some righties that do very, very well against lefties. And you can look back to the last series when Will Harris comes in and records a lot of outs. Ryan Pressly records a lot of outs. Josh James, V-low, changeup, combo gets a lot of lefties. So I don't work in a lot of hypotheticals. We have what we have, and we're happy with it. The challenges are just trying to give good left-handed hitters different looks throughout a long series. This series is going to last from 4 to 7 games. Soto is going to be a big part of the series. Eaton hits at the top of their order. Cabrera being left-handed. Adams and Parr off the bench. They have an array of left-handed hitters. But when you look at Soto as an example, he handles left-handed pitching and he handles right-handed pitching. Giving him different looks at critical moments in the game is a challenge in its own right. The fact that we don't have a lefty to give them one of those looks is just a reality that we've dealt with for a long time. Q. As it relates for the last 24 hours and also the entirety of your time here, how would you evaluate how this organization, management, front office, everybody, handles people? AJ HINCH: I don't think it's my job to evaluate that. I understand the question, I appreciate it, but the last 24 hours I've been pretty locked in on the Nats. And I think answering that question at this moment is probably not fair to me or not fair to the organization. Q. Do you believe in carry-over momentum for how dramatic that series was? AJ HINCH: This series I do because they were off and we were on. It's super important that we have the carry-over momentum. Not really, to answer your question. I think it was really good for us to win in six games for a lot of reasons, Gerrit Cole being available is the main reason. Getting a day off before our work out day was the main reason. But I don't know that momentum is necessarily going to be at the top of the list of the excitement when we take the field or we get the announcement of the National Anthem and the lineups and we're on the big stage. I think you can probably put that one to bed when you're dealing with two teams that are getting to this stage. I certainly like that we've been tested. I like that we've had to fight to get here. There was a lot of talk going into the playoffs how people were writing sort of these entry ideas on getting to the World Series. But getting to a Game 5 with Tampa, getting through a tough series with the Yankees bodes well, because this is not going to be an easy series, none of them are this time of year. And that's not to say that it's been easy for Washington just because they had an early sweep and they've had some time off. We'll interpret it all at the end, I see how everybody plays and then we'll react accordingly. Q. What's the organization's thinking in not putting Wade Miley on the roster the last two series? And because of it are you looking at another bullpen game in Game 4 against AnÃbal Sánchez? AJ HINCH: I'll answer the question about Wade with this series, the Yankee series is over. Part of this analysis, when you look at this team they handle left-handed pitching really well. When you look at what Rendon does, when you look at what Zimmerman does, when you look at Trea Turner, when you look at Dozier off the bench, when you look at Robles being healthy again. Both catchers right-handed. While Wade is pretty effective against right-handed hitters we just felt like they were able to cover the left handed pitching. Now when you start to factor that in, there were a couple of instances where you could use him as a left-handed specialist. Like I said earlier, Soto handles lefties just as well. You look at some of the guys off the bench versus some of the right-handed relievers that we could bring in. The length that Wade could provide we think we can absorb with some of our other right-handed pitchers, Brad Peacock or Urquidy or Chris Devenski. You have to make a decision at some point what you feel are the best weapons against those guys. Unfortunately for Wade, who had a tremendous year, he had a bad September, probably the bad month at the wrong time and I feel for him. He's worked really hard to get to this position to potentially pitch in the World Series. That was a gut-wrenching conversation with him because we all love Wade and wanted him to be more a part of it, but when you've got to make decisions you've got to make decisions. Q. Second part is, are you looking at a bullpen Game 4? AJ HINCH: Yes, so Game 4 is very similar to how it was in this series that we've had. I can see it being a bullpen game or I could see it -- Urquidy is really the only guy that we would have stretched out far enough to be called a starter in the same conversation like we're talking about a traditional starter. But depending on how we deploy Peacock and Urquidy, in specific those two guys in the first couple of games, will dictate kind of which direction we go in Game 4. Q. How do you control the nerves or what do you do as a manager for the young guys that are playing for the first time and some of the older guys that are playing in their first World Series? AJ HINCH: I want the nerves. I want our guys to be a little bit on edge. We're playing in the World Series. It should feel like a big deal. It should feel like something extra special. And then once the game settles in, I want our guys to be themselves. I don't want them to be too hyper or too out of their norm. From a player perspective, I think the beauty of our experience is that we've got some guys that have been there, and we've gone through it before. No matter what happens in these games early on, if a player struggles, they can turn to George Springer and say, Hey, man, what was it like punching out four times in Game 1 of the World Series? He did that. When you look at the dramatic home runs that we hit in '17, there's performances that guys that have already done that I think settles these guys in quickly. Our mindset has always been to win today's game. We're not thinking about winning the World Series today. We're thinking about winning Game 1. That mentality since we've had it since day 1 will feel no different today once the game starts. But I kind of dig seeing a bunch of guys that are successful, they're big, big personalities. We've all got egos, we're in the big leagues. Be nervous, man, enjoy it. Enjoy the uniqueness of being in a World Series. It doesn't come around nearly often enough. I know we've been here a couple of times in three years. But you really should embrace it. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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