AL WILD CARD SERIES: BLUE JAYS VS TWINS

October 3, 2023

Rocco Baldelli

Target Field

Minnesota Twins

Postgame Press Conference

Twins - 3, Blue Jays - 1

ROCCO BALDELLI: Everyone wants to know what stars look like, those are stars, both of those two.

Q. Having been here for a bit, what do you think this win means to this city?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Well, I think fans here support this organization through and through, generations do. They love the team, and they want to enjoy things like what they just saw at the ballpark today.

The ballpark, I think, was a great representation today of how the community here feels about us and what we do.

I thought the place was going to split open and melt, like honestly. It was out of this universe out there on the field. The fans took over the game. They helped us win today. They helped us win the game, and they helped us in so many ways out there.

You could see it, if you were just visually watching and seeing how the players were reacting on the other side of the field. It's the energy but it's actually a challenging environment to play in right now.

So I couldn't be more excited and thankful for what they did for us today to help us get over this hump and now we're back on the train now.

Q. How do you and everybody in there kind of balance the emotions of that, this being a meaningful win, such a meaningful win for this city, but also it's -- in the grand scheme of things it's one win, and you guys as a team have been working toward a championship. How do you balance the emotions of it?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I think it's fine to celebrate an exceptional win because I think we did a lot of good things on the field today, the things that we wanted to do. And I can talk about those things.

But I think it's fine to celebrate that. I think there's not one person in our clubhouse who doesn't realize that there is a lot of work still to be done. And as soon as we change and shower up and eat dinner and head home and go to bed, we'll reset and we'll get ready for tomorrow. And again a lot of work still to do.

Q. What can you say about the defense that you saw today, Taylor making a couple of big catches, and Correa saving that run?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Well, I have my notes, Phil, because I don't remember everything all the time. Michael Taylor took over the game in center field. He's been doing that all year for us. Anyone that's watched us has seen that from Michael Taylor. He contributes on both sides of the ball.

When you make an out, a lot of them are routine, but when you make an out that is not routine and you go above and beyond and do that, it just stops the inning. When you start just recording outs, racking up outs, you're taking away base runners and creating an out on the same play.

Those things flip the game completely on its head. And Michael Taylor did that for us and flipped the game in our favor because of the way he patrolled center field.

The play that Carlos Correa made, that play should be shown -- that should be shown everywhere over and over again. The anticipation, knowing that's one outcome that can happen. The ball could end up where it ended up, getting there, getting down, making -- those are awkward plays. You never practice that play ever.

And it's a play that, again, I'm going to enjoy watching in the future and I think every baseball fan -- it's just a hell of a baseball play. And if you like watching the biggest players making the biggest plays in the biggest games, then you should go watch that play. It was fantastic.

Donovan Solano made a great play at the end of the game, too. And the ball's hit -- Duran did the right thing to cover, he did a good job getting over there -- that's far from a routine play as well. I'm probably forgetting things, but I thought we did some things positively defensively.

Q. Jorge Polanco is playing a little out of position today. Are you comfortable with him being back at third base tomorrow? And what could you say about the forms of your bullpen today?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I'm absolutely comfortable with Jorge playing third base. Trust me, he's going to go to bed again, like I just said, wake up, and get ready. Go out there, get his work in. We keep it simple, and we'll get him prepared to go out there, do his job. He'll be fine.

Our bullpen, that's kind of what postseason bullpen performances look like. That's what you're looking for from your guys. It's going to be one after the other. It's going to be guys pitching in big spots where we think they match up good. And every single guy we turned to went out there and threw great.

That's actually the way you draw it up. And we're playing against a good team. Their offense is good. There's not going to be innings where we're just going to fly through innings and face -- it's not going to be easy, really, is what I'm saying. Our bullpen was fantastic.

Q. When you went home last night, how much uncertainty was there about whether or not Royce would be available today?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I felt fairly confident that he would be our DH. That's what I was feeling when I left the ballpark. Nick Paparesta, our head trainer, felt the same. Normally when he feels something, almost I'm going to end up feeling somewhere right in that vicinity.

So we've talked through this so much recently, our guys that were coming back and dealing with physical issues, and we got to a really good point with Royce where we felt he could go hit.

Again, we saw it when he hit a ground ball today, he was under control, when he ran down the first baseline. He can run, but what we don't want is him extending himself to the point where we have any sort of setback. And he did a good job of that.

Q. We've talked about Royce stepping up in those big moments, but to arrive on the October stage like this, in a game like this, what can you even say about him at this point?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I've tried to stretch my vocabulary and drop all the great adjectives. I can't believe sometimes the things that he's doing, they're that impressive.

But to be able to do it, come back, experience everything that goes along with those moments, which there can be highs and there can be a lot of emotion, but the fact that he's still able to come to the ballpark the next day, get his work in, head out onto the field, not overthink things -- which I know can happen when you have a lot of success like that -- he does such a great job of getting ready to go, and then just performing over and over again. He's a special player, and what we're seeing again -- haven't seen people doing the things that he's doing right now, and we've all been around some good players. But he's good.

Q. A rookie pitching in front of his hometown crowd, what gave you the confidence in Louie in that spot, probably the biggest spot he's ever pitched in?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Huge out. Well, it's hard just not to say -- he's thrown the ball so well out of the bullpen for us. I'm not worried about the moment. He can handle the moment. He comes in to throw strikes and get ahead and then go at people with the great stuff that he has.

He's performed so well. He's handled the move to the bullpen so well that he was a guy -- I was waiting to get him into a game, this game. I was hoping that we got into a good spot where we could bring Louie Varland in.

Part of me was I want to let this guy roll a little bit, because that's what he's done, thrown multiple innings a lot for us.

But getting Caleb hot and getting him into the game for that run of hitters also made sense. Luckily, Lou will be ready to go and we can ask really anything of him going forward in the series.

Nick Gordon also might be the best hype man that I've seen on the end of the bench in a very, very long time. And, of course, he would love to be out there in the action, but I could feel the crowd responding to him and he loved it, so I loved it too.