AL DIVISION SERIES: RAYS VS RED SOX

October 11, 2021

Garrett Whitlock

Fenway Park

Boston Red Sox

Pregame 4 Press Conference

Q. Garrett, can you talk about your success this year going from Rule 6 draft pick to a good contributor with the Red Sox.

GARRETT WHITLOCK: Well, I appreciate it, but I'm still just trying to earn my spot on the team. I joked with Chris Messina the other day, now that the season's over, I guess I completed the Rule 5 stuff. So I joked you're stuck with me now.

Q. When people talk about the top bullpens in baseball, you guys are generally not mentioned throughout the season. Do you guys see that as a motivation?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: We try to tune that stuff out and just go out there and compete each day.

Q. Do you think that you have proven something this off-season with how well you guys have performed?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: Again, we're just trying to win games. We'll let that fall where it may.

Q. Garrett, is there a point in this postseason where you've had kind of a pinch-me moment given your career path the last months, or did you maybe pass that during the course of the regular season and this is just an extension of that or does this feel different? Does it have a more almost surreal feel given where you came from and how quickly?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: If I ever have a day where I'm just like, oh, it's another day, that's the day you come and take me out because I told you all at the beginning of Spring Training, I never want to take a day for granted ever again.

So postseason, this may never happen again. Obviously, you want to be in it every year, but I just want to take it all in and soak it all up. I go out each day and just try and take in the surroundings.

Like I told Chad, if I suck, yeah, it sucks, but if I do great, then great. I just want to enjoy the moment because this is every little kid's dream. So I just want to soak it all up.

Q. The Red Sox playing on Marathon Monday is something that's happened for years. For today's game do you feel the anticipation in the city maybe coming in or driving in? What's your thoughts on these two things happening at the same time in such a big game for you guys?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: It was quite neat. So I'm staying in the hotel close by. We got the marathon running right out in front of our hotel. So it's kind of cool to watch all the runners and everything. My wife was doing work, looking out the window, and seeing the runners. That was pretty neat it was going on.

Q. Just wondering about the way you guys are being used in the bullpen. When was the last time you were part of a team where there was such game-to-game urgency that the postseason brings? Was it high school? College? Anything like that? Just what goes into the preparation to have your name called literally at any second?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: For me it's like I've been saying this since day one, whenever AC tells me to go out and get outs, I'm just going to get outs until he comes and takes the ball away from me. That's pretty much how I've been going about things.

Q. Just the feeling after the euphoria of last night, getting up this morning and then coming to the ballpark, what's kind of the mentality of the team being up two games to one in this series?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: Win today. Yesterday was yesterday. Today's today.

Q. You talked about just wanting to appreciate every moment, right? Is there one, though? Like if you think back on the last six months, what's the first moment you think of?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: When AC, I was in the weight room in Spring Training complex, and AC came up to me and said, hey, we've got to talk. My eyes were like okay. This is going to be one of two things. So I walk out and we're in the tent area, because of COVID and everything we had that tent area outside. It was him -- AC, Chaim, Bushy, Tek, and Walk. They're all sitting under the tent, and I was like, all right, this is going to be a good or bad thing.

I think it was the moment when Chaim asked me, hey, have you got any plans for April 1st? When he asked me like, hey, we'd love to have you out there, it was a pretty special moment. So that's definitely by far been the most memorable one.

Q. Garrett, many great pitchers have never thrown a pitch in the postseason. When you're in the middle of fighting the way that you guys are to win today like you mentioned, are you able to appreciate it, what you have accomplished personally?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: Again, just trying to take it day by day but also soak up everything just because, like I said, you never know if this will happen again. Like you said, not everyone gets to have experiences like this.

So, yes, you're trying to compete your tail off and everything, but at the same time, appreciate and soak up everything.

Q. You mentioned that moment with Alex. How would you sum up just sort of his influence, his steering of the ship the way he does it? How would you sum him up?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: He's a guy you'd run through a wall for. Like I said, if he told me to run through that wall, I'd believe that he had something there to make sure it would fall for me. That's the kind of leader he is.

Q. How does that translate into wins? What does that do for you guys?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: If you want to play for someone and work for someone, that's the kind of guy that inspires you. So you want to show up each day for that guy just because you know he's put a lot on for us, and so we try and do the same for him.

Q. Alex said that Nate went to him earlier today and said he volunteered to pitch an inning even after his start last night. I wonder, just observing the veterans throughout this, do you see maybe a different level of competitiveness, of edginess? What do you appreciate about them in these moments?

GARRETT WHITLOCK: All of them are extremely great leaders. I always told the guys in Spring Training too, like my dad always told me, you've got two ears and one mouth, so shut up and listen. Whenever any of the veterans speak, I try and soak it all up just because they've done something to stick around for this long. So you try to listen to everything they've got.