AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS VS ASTROS

October 7, 2023

Rocco Baldelli

Minute Maid Park

Minnesota Twins

Postgame 1 Press Conference

Q. Rocco, what did you think of Bailey after the first pitch obviously? What made you turn to the pen?

ROCCO BALDELLI: What was the last question?

Q. Going to Kenta after three.

ROCCO BALDELLI: We had an idea, I talked to our guys about Bailey going out there and getting us through a certain portion of the game and Kenta also giving us a good portion of the game too. It was going to be a group effort from our pitching staff.

Bailey went out there and obviously fired a strike, probably a high strike on the first pitch, and obviously it gets hit. That's Altuve. That's what he's capable of. He can do things like that.

Bailey's stuff, I thought was actually pretty good. It was actually up a little, I think, today, knowing he was going to go in a little bit of a shorter role for us. And we were going to play it by ear, by watching the game to see just when and where we got our other guys involved.

Then of course big swing by Yordan, and then we go to Kenta. They had good at-bats against us early in the game against the first two guys that we put out there, and they kind of grinded us a little bit. But then we did a good job of staying in the game.

It's not always going to be perfect. You're going to give up runs at times, and you're going to go down at times. But our guys kept us in the ballgame, and our offense came back and made things happen, and we had some big swings.

We were right in there. I know you didn't ask me about all this, but I'm going to keep talking. Verlander goes out there, and we had pretty good at-bats against him. That's what I would call it. We had a lot of traffic out there. We're one good swing or even one well-placed swing away from getting some real action going, putting some runs up, and we just didn't get that.

The double plays today, they happened in our game, and we know that. They're a big reason why the innings we had going, we didn't get exactly where we needed to be, and we're going to have to deal with that. But we stayed in the game and still had an opportunity to win the game all the way to the end of the game.

Q. You talked coming into the series about lefties versus Alvarez, righties -- is this just an example there is no good matchup against a hitter that good?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I would say he's a good hitter against everyone. It's funny you don't normally talk about good players like this. He's probably really good against righties on average and also very good against lefties.

You'd still probably rather take your chances bringing your good lefties in there and giving guys an opportunity to get him out. He just hit an off-speed pitch, stayed through it, and found the barrel. He's strong. He doesn't have to get all of it to hit the ball out of the ballpark it. He doesn't have to get all of it to hit the ball out of the ballpark.

And he had a good day today. You also have to go after these guys. Pitching, not even around them, but trying to be very fine with everything you do with all these guys isn't going to get you where you need to be. You have to attack them and throw strikes.

They're going to swing. They don't strike out much as a group, so you're going to have to attack in the zone.

Q. You mentioned attacking them. Could this impact your decision-making later when potentially a lefty against Yordan moving forward in this series?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I don't judge things based on watching one at-bat or one swing. My guess is Caleb will be in there to face those guys again at some point in this series, if not more than once this series. So I think that kind of answers the question.

We have some damn good relievers that we can go to in a lot of spots, and we're going to give them those chances to go out there and get outs.

Q. Is there anything you liked about the game plan coming out against Verlander and then anything you think sort of changes in the middle innings when he got in a groove?

ROCCO BALDELLI: That's a good question. He definitely found himself and found the mix that he's looking for. He's a guy that, if he has something that he doesn't like, he'll go away from it, and he'll go to what feels good on that day.

Think at some points he was going to the fastball up in certain points where maybe he thought we were looking more off-speed. But I was pleased. I was actually -- I'm sitting there through a couple of innings, a few innings, and I'm going, man, how many more base runners could you want out there to go do something?

So I liked the way we went into the game. I liked our hitters' execution of the game plan and swinging at the right pitches and things like that. So I did like that.

One thing we did do also, we made them throw a lot of pitches. He can pitch -- you know, towards the end of the game, if his pitch count is right. But we were able to get to their bullpen, and they have a good bullpen, but we were able to get into that bullpen and make some things happen.

With the amount of action that we had on the bases, we probably didn't -- we didn't get the runs that you would normally think you would get in those situations.

Q. How important is it to have someone like Pablo Lopez for tomorrow in this series?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Handing Pablo the ball is something that every time you hand him the ball, you feel very confident. The guys around him feel confident. He gives you a great chance to win a ballgame every time. He's ultracompetitive, and it rubs off on everyone.

I could say the same things about Sonny Gray. Those two guys are going to come up and pitch next. When you give them the ball, you think they're going to pitch you to a win every time regardless of who you're facing. So that's the kind of guy you do want. That's who he is.

Q. Rocco, I hate to use the "S" word around you again, but the Twins have a rather lengthy streak of not scoring many runs in the postseason, 18 games with four or fewer games now. I assume, especially tonight with the 1-for-12 with runners in scoring position, is it safe to say you think it's a fluke? Well, what would you say about such a streak?

ROCCO BALDELLI: I wouldn't because our players that are in the clubhouse over there are an excellent group of players and a really good offense and one of the best offenses in the game in the second half this year. Most of that has nothing to do with them, so I don't really have much to say about it.

And there's a remedy for it, and you get some base runners on base and whack a three-run homer and hit another double, and it's over. That's how fast it happens, just like the last series we played was something that our team hasn't done in a while, and then all of a sudden it happens. So that's kind of the way I look at it.

Q. It is still just nine runs in three games this postseason. Do you feel any frustration growing over you had so many breakout games the last couple of months, that it hasn't happened yet?

ROCCO BALDELLI: No, I'm not really thinking about it like that. I think postseason baseball, in postseason baseball you're going to have to win a lot of low scoring games. We're throwing out there and facing some of the best pitchers in the game on a game-by-game basis on a daily basis.

You're probably going to think you're going to have to win low-scoring affairs in order to do it. There's other ways to win those games. You might have to manufacture a bit. You might just whack a few over the fence and all that. But, no, you're going to have to fight and claw and have a good approach and battle for nine innings to score runs off all the guys pitching right now, including our guys that are pitching.