AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: RANGERS VS ASTROS

October 19, 2023

Justin Verlander

Globe Life Field

Houston Astros

Pregame 4 Press Conference

Q. I know you talk about it quite often, but when you get your normal day's rest, how does it make such a difference for you?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: You know, in the regular season, you get on a normal rest and routine, and you get some consistency, like I've talked about before. There's only one way to practice full speed, and that's in a game.

Once you kind of get in that regular routine and kind of get your mechanics honed in, when you're going on regular rest, that usually helps keeps you locked in.

We saw the other night I was a little erratic early on, and started to get better as the game went on. I'm hopeful, although you still don't know, I'm hopeful that that will be something I can piggyback off of since I didn't have a long rest.

Q. We heard a lot that postseason is different, and you have so much playoff experience, is the postseason -- is pitching in the postseason tangibly different, and if so, how?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think there's -- it's going to sound odd to say, but there's just more a focus on winning the baseball game, whereas in the regular season there's a lot of other focuses of going deep in the ballgame, saving the bullpen. You might sacrifice a run for not going into a big inning.

Whereas in the playoffs sometimes you're maybe more willing to make a pitch that -- regular season it's a 3-0 count and you think the guy is swinging, and you're like, okay, I'll give in here. In the playoffs, given the situation, you might not, because the game could hang in the balance right there.

And it's just lower-scoring affairs during the playoffs usually. Just everything is magnified a little bit. And so it does change slightly.

Q. What do you do less in your routine in the postseason in order to keep your arm fresh?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: Nothing less. You know, I guess like the regular season, it largely depends on how I come out of a start, is dependent upon how I treat my four or five days' rest in between. If I'm dragging a little bit, I'll do less. If the start before went the way I wanted it to, I'll just have my normal routine. If it didn't go the way I wanted it to, if I felt like my mechanics were off or I had something to work, then I'll throw a little bit more to work on things.

So it just depends. I think in the playoffs there's so much other stuff that's new and stressful. I think you just try to rely on your normal routine and what's gotten you here as much as you can.

Q. Last few years you talked a lot after starts that you made adjustments or found something mechanical that you worked on. Do you still do that in the playoffs, or do you kind of stick with what you have? Or do you not -- is it like I don't want to mess with it at this point in the season?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: Yeah, I mean, I tweaked a little something in between. I normally do. You don't want to go and reinvent the wheel right now. It's too late. Let's say you start the season off and things are going awry and clearly you're not pitching the way you want on a regular basis, that's the time to change things, and you've got to change them quickly or it's going to be a bad year.

Now it's too late to change something drastically, but there are still little tweaks that can be made from start to start. Just little things you notice here and there.

So, yeah, I think I'm still constantly adjusting. I think you may be referencing last year in the World Series, made some decent adjustments, I thought, that contributed.

I've always been a bit of a tinkerer when it comes to mechanics, so I wouldn't change that now just because. I always tinker because I think it's going to be something that will benefit me. If I didn't, I wouldn't do it. So why change that now?

Q. So many of your guys have been here so many times. Can those intangibles show up in a series like this, and can it make a difference in a game like tonight?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: Yeah, I think it does show up. It can make a difference. Will it? Who knows. But I think a bit of the -- having been here and done that can help, you know.

You fall down 2-0 in a series, and we don't have to look that far backwards to remember falling down 2-0 in the World Series, and then we went into Atlanta and won three games -- or, sorry, D.C. We didn't win that series, but those next three games, we did what we needed to do to put us back into the series and give us a chance to win.

Obviously wish it would have turned out different back then. But there's a lot of things that you can look back on and use to your advantage and say, okay, we've been there, let's not panic, not try to do anything extra. Just keep doing what's gotten us here. And it sounds easy, but it's not as easy to pull off. I think that's what makes this team so dangerous.

Q. You've talked about the character in the clubhouse. Can you take us through what it's like being on the top step of the dugout watching the guys fight and knowing that you get the ball to help personally contribute. And also, any difference whether it's facing elimination or 2-2?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: I guess the first part, I think it's just when you're going to battle throughout the regular season and you rely on one another so much and then you get to this point and you find yourself in a hole and you see the guys go out there and see Javier go out and do what he's consistently done in the postseason, and see our hitters go out there and have a great game, it brings the momentum back hopefully to your side.

As a starting pitcher, I'm not out there and able to contribute on that given day. So I'm a fan just like everybody else and just as nervous as anybody else. I get really excited to see the guys go out there and have success. Does that change going into a game 5, up or down? No, not really, it's still a pivotal game either way.

Q. Piggybacking on the difference between regular season and postseason, kind of a simple question, but how much do you relish in the microscope of every pitch and the fine tuneness that you have to have during this time of year, versus there's so much going on in the regular season?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: A lot. I really enjoy that part of the game. There's a lot going on in the regular season, too. It's just as much. You think about it slightly different now.

It's not that anything more goes into pitch selection or what my thought process is now it's just playoff baseball is slightly different. One run in the regular season, you talk about saying solo home runs don't hurt you. Well, they can in the playoffs. If you lose 1-0.

I lost a game in the playoffs at home against the Red Sox in '12 or '13. Pitched 8 innings, gave up one run, a solo homer to Napoli. We lost 1-0. I wish I had that pitch back. In the regular season, it's like, we went 8 innings, we lost, okay. Bullpen is saved. We've got a better chance to win tomorrow. In a five or seven-game series in playoffs that win is so critical it changes your thought processes.

Q. When you face a team twice in a playoff series, have you learned anything during the course of your career on how to approach the second start?

JUSTIN VERLANDER: Not really. It poses a challenge, especially in an offense as good as theirs. These guys make adjustments so quickly, you have to be prepared to make adjustments back, either preemptively or reactively. I think.

I'm watching a lot of the games and trying to see what those guys are doing, adjustment-wise on their end so that I can have an idea going forward what they're trying to do so I can adjust maybe preemptively. But you never know until you're out there and competing, that's when everything happens.