NL DIVISION SERIES: PADRES VS DODGERS

October 6, 2024

Yu Darvish

Dodger Stadium

San Diego Padres

Postgame 2 Press Conference

Padres - 10, Dodgers - 2

Q. Yu, asked you about facing Ohtani. You said the focus was all nine Dodgers. You did that today, and you did not have any traffic for Ohtani when you faced him. How important was that in dictating your day?

YU DARVISH: I think it was important. I felt like I had really good concentration on the mound, just going batter by batter, and just great focus. And I did get in trouble a little bit in the second inning, but other than that, I thought it was a pretty good night.

Q. Can you walk us through your perspective of the top of seventh inning with the things coming on the field and you having to stay warm for 10, 15 minutes, whatever?

YU DARVISH: I've never experienced anything like that. What I was thinking was I was thinking it was important not to give up any runs in that inning. If you do that, the tendency is that sort of the game flow changes. So my mindset was just shut them down here.

Q. In the first inning, what did you think when you realized that Profar actually made the catch and it wasn't a home run by Betts?

YU DARVISH: I thought that was gone. And my mind was like, okay, it's a tie game, let's go, let's go, let's get back into the game. But obviously he actually caught that ball. So I feel lucky.

Q. You were right there when Manny called that meeting in the dugout after that seventh inning. What was said?

YU DARVISH: Some dirty words here and there. (Laughter)

Q. The series is 1-1 going back to San Diego. How do you feel about that with the way that you guys won today?

YU DARVISH: I think it's huge. Getting one win here, going back, having two games there, you know, it's really good for us, for sure.

Q. Would you go over that classic at-bat you had with Ohtani, the one there, you just mixed up the slow stuff until your last pitch. That was the only one over 90. He chopped it back to the mound. I can't remember which inning, but he grounded it back to you and that's the way it ended. Every pitch in that at-bat before that was 70-, 80-mile-an-hour, and then the final pitch was a cutter, like 90.

YU DARVISH: I was trying to see how he reacted to some of the pitches that I was throwing. And on top of that, I was trying to keep him off balance by holding a little bit longer, stuff like that, so that anything that you can do to keep him off balance. I think it worked pretty well tonight.