AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS VS ASTROS

October 11, 2023

Rocco Baldelli

Target Field

Minnesota Twins

Postgame 4 Press Conference

Astros - 3, Twins - 2

Q. Was one time through the plan for Joe all along, or were there red flags in his couple of innings?

ROCCO BALDELLI: No, the plan for Joe was somewhere in that general range. We had a full bullpen of good bullpen arms. Truthfully in an elimination game like we were in today, there's no need to ride your starter. We wanted to get the best stuff out of Joe possible, which generally was going to be about one time through maybe.

There was a chance he was going to go a little longer, but at some point you just have to make a call as far as when that time is going to be, and we could get Brock Stewart into the game and get him going.

It's never set in stone. It's moving as the game moves.

Q. You must feel like it worked, right? One pitch from Caleb, pretty much the bullpen did its job?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Our pitchers, they did a good job tonight. They threw the ball well. We didn't score enough runs today. It was a low-scoring affair. Both sides pitched very well.

I was very pleased with the way our guys competed out there on the mound in general, made the plays behind them. We got what we wanted, I think, out of the situation.

Like any game, you're going to bank on your team scoring some runs and making some things happen, and they did a good job. They attacked us well. Urquidy changed speeds very well today and kept us pretty off balance for his duration.

That was it. Any playoff series, they can end either way. You can win or lose them real quick. Offensively it didn't feel like we probably settled in and had the at-bats we had for most of the year -- most of the second half at least, but you have to give credit to the team on the other side of the field for being a good ball club and for pitching well.

Q. Did you like the approach there against Urquidy from the team? I think you guys struck out 14 today, 14 yesterday.

ROCCO BALDELLI: We're a team that will strike out. The strikeouts in and of themselves, that's not necessarily the issue. You'd like to put a few more balls in play on the barrel and see what happens.

He did, he changed speeds. He used the slower breaking ball. He used the change-up. He did some different things. He had more on his fastball today than I think we were anticipating, if the numbers on the board are right, which I think they are. He had some very good life on that pitch, and the velo was also seemingly a little up as well.

He had a lot of things going today. Obviously anyone watching the game could also see he enjoys kind of playing with the pitch clock and letting it time all the way down, and just stepping up to the mound and pitching. It's actually -- you have to have good awareness and good athleticism and feel to be able to do that and still make good pitches. He made a lot of good pitches, at least from where I was sitting.

Q. You sent Royce in the sixth inning, he stole the base, and Max was called out on a pitch that TV showed several times probably wasn't over the plate. How much did that change things right there in the middle?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Any time you're playing in a low-scoring affair, every base runner does matter, and every situation does matter. We didn't lose today because of a call or of two calls, I don't think.

There have been other games I might tell you something different. I don't think that was it. It's unfortunate. It's very unfortunate when that happens. No player wants to have the bat taken out of his hands, especially when there's a guy potentially in scoring position. That inning just ending -- I mean, it's frustrating, but there was a lot more to the game than just that call.

Q. I know it's still fresh, but how do you -- how would you sum up the season? What do you look back on?

ROCCO BALDELLI: Normally I don't talk about what we talk about in the clubhouse, but I just addressed the team.

I thought our players, I thought they got better through the year. The team is hungry in a way that I don't think we probably even were before. You get a taste of something like this, you show this to people, what this looks like and what it is. We're not that far from playing in the World Series. We're playing against the best teams in baseball right now, doing a helluva job going out there, competing against them, and beating them.

We didn't get it done in this series. We got beat. But I couldn't be happier with what I saw from so many of our guys, and I told them that.

We had a team, we assembled a team this year that had a lot of baseball players on the team, guys that have really good feel. They love coming to the ballpark every day. They love to work. And when you have guys that love to work, you're capable of more when you have a group like that.

I think that's what we did, and I hope we can continue to assemble really good clubs that play like that and that think about the game like that and have that type of awareness and things like that. I think it was a strength of ours and something that we talked about and did, and we got some good results. We just have to keep getting better.

I'd also like to say that the crowd, the fans, they were -- I mean, it was absolutely amazing being out there and having them behind us the way they were. I think every guy in our dugout, they could probably sit here and talk for a while about it. I look forward to more of that. It was great.

Q. They got really excited (no microphone).

ROCCO BALDELLI: They got really excited from first pitch to the last pitch, and they were with us and tried to propel us to where we were going. That's what you're looking for. That's a helluva fan base.