AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: RANGERS VS ASTROS

October 16, 2023

Bruce Bochy

Minute Maid Park

Texas Rangers

Pregame 2 Press Conference

Q. Thoughts at being 1-0 in the series?

BRUCE BOCHY: Well, it's always good to get up 1-0, no getting around that. A lot of baseball, but a good start with the pitching and the defense and a couple of big hits there. It's the best of seven, and we know that.

Q. Wonder if you can touch on the Grossman/Carter decision in terms of your lineup today?

BRUCE BOCHY: Yeah. I'll start with Robbie's numbers against left-handed pitching there. They're really good. So we wanted another right-handed bat in there. Robbie gives you quality at-bats there.

With Carter, he just has not had a lot of bats off of lefties. I think 15 here. He's a young kid. This is a tough left-hander, and I know he gets a lot of strikeouts. You can look at the splits, a little bit reverse, but Robbie has experience here playing left field. But Carter, he'll be involved at some point.

Q. When you look at the composition of your roster for this series, after adding Gray and Scherzer, you have eight guys on the staff who started at least eight games for you during the regular season. What, if any, are the advantages of having so many starters on a postseason roster?

BRUCE BOCHY: I think the biggest advantage is the multiple innings they can give you. It can save your bullpen when you have guys out there that can go two, three, four, five or even six innings. Start with Martín Pérez, Bradford and Dunning, Heaney, so you don't end up overusing somebody. It gives you coverage left and right with those long guys, along with our shorter guys. So that's I think the biggest advantage.

Q. A lot of guys in the lineup are experiencing their first playoffs. What do you think has allowed them to not look too overwhelmed by this stage?

BRUCE BOCHY: Yeah, I mentioned a couple of things, confidence. These guys have shown the confidence that you look for from a player handling performing under pressure. They have a calmness about them, too. They don't get too up or too down.

You followed our club, and these guys are pretty low key with the wins or losses. They have the ability to focus forward. Tough at-bats, whatever. So that works. So that's what I think helps them.

Q. Your bullpen has really been a work in progress for weeks or even months. But in the last few weeks you've given the ball to Leclerc to close out games in all the postseason. At what point did he gain your confidence to close out these games maybe in the last three weeks or so, four weeks?

BRUCE BOCHY: Well, I'll start with when his stuff got back to where it normally is. Starting out, and I'll go back to Spring Training, he was dealing with a little neck issue, nerve issue, I believe.

But anyway, that kept him from being the pitcher that he is right now. He was hoping to go to play in the WBC for the Dominican, but we didn't feel like he was healthy enough. And then the start of the season as our closer, stuff was down a couple of ticks, his command was off, and I'm sure that had something to do with it. This game is hard enough to play when you're a hundred percent. And he wasn't saying much about it.

Anyway, you could see the stuff coming up, you could see the command getting better, and that's when I knew we had the Leclerc that we know.

Q. Can you just tell us a little bit -- just to confirm, Max is starting Game 3? I saw those reports. Is Max starting Game 3?

BRUCE BOCHY: Well, he's ready. That's why he's starting Game 3. A few days ago back home he threw 69 pitches to hitters and came -- he came out of that fine. And during that time he maintained his stamina stuff. So he was available yesterday. In fact, he said he wanted to pitch yesterday if needed, if it went extra innings or something.

But anyway it works out well that he can go Game 3. We're off tomorrow, give him an extra day. He's good to go. He's excited. Believe me, he's been wearing me out a little bit, just assuring us that, hey, I'm healthy, I'm ready to go.

Q. Can you give us a sense of how much he's been lobbying you to get this start or get back on the roster?

BRUCE BOCHY: Really it started not too long after the injury. And I'll go back to Baltimore. He threw there and he threw very well. And I think his confidence grew with where he was at with that injury there. And so he just felt that he was getting close.

So the last series, we even thought about, okay, we could activate him for that. But our concern was, well, if we have to take him off, he wouldn't be ready for this series. So that's why we held him back a little bit, continued the bullpens, the live BP.

But during that time he was keeping us abreast of where he was at, how he felt. Nobody knows his body better than him. He's unbelievable at just telling us where he's at, how close he is and things like that.

Q. I know he threw 65 pitches at home last week. How many do you think he'll be able to go for Game 3?

BRUCE BOCHY: That number I mentioned would be a starting point. 68, 69 pitches, whatever it was. So that's a good starting point. I don't think it would be less than that because he's gone that far. He didn't hold back. He was being Max out there. And we were going to cut him a little short and he said I want to go one more inning, that's how good he felt. So that's where I'd start with.