AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v YANKEES

October 4, 2004

Mike Mussina

MIKE MUSSINA: Well, I think we've all been saying this all year; that we go out there every night trying to shut them down, and when we get one, then we try to hold them at one. This is the post-season, and everybody is going to be experienced and expecting to go out there and pitch well. We are all expecting to out there and play well. I know everybody has questions, but we just -- they have had questions all year and we've won 101 games, so I don't know what else we're supposed to do. Go out there and try to win 11 games now.

MIKE MUSSINA: In what respect do you mean that? I pitched the first game last year in both the first two rounds.

MIKE MUSSINA: I think I'm still just one of the guys that gets to pitch. I can't do any more than the game I play in, and that's it. I mean, if I try to tell myself now that I'm the one guy that everybody else is looking to then I'm not going to perform as well. I'm just going to go out there and pitch as if I'm doing the job I've always been doing.

MIKE MUSSINA: I'm just glad I'm back in there doing what I was doing. It was an interesting year and not one that I expected and here I am the first week of October and we're still playing and I'm going to get to pitch in the post-season. So in that respect, it's what we all look forward to back in February and March, and just the road getting here wasn't the road that I assumed I was going to take, but the team took the right one and so here we are.

MIKE MUSSINA: I feel fine. I haven't thought about my arm in five or six starts. I don't think about that stuff anymore. It's just about pitching. It's just about the right pitch and the right location and go and that's it. That's all it's been. I don't have any concerns about that kind of stuff; I feel good.

MIKE MUSSINA: I don't think we are a surprise. I think we expected to play well and I think everybody expected us to play well. We won games this year in different ways than we have won games in the past. The past three years I've been here, we were not a team that would be down four or five runs and two innings later we were only down a run. That's just wasn't the way it was. I think we set some kind of record for come-from-behind wins and all that stuff. It's just a different style of team this year. You know, the pitching hasn't been as healthy. The same names aren't running out there all the time. But the guys we have that are going out there are just as capable of pitching as anybody else we've sent out there, so I expect us to play well.

MIKE MUSSINA: That I'm a relief pitcher now? (Laughter.) You like that one, huh? No, I don't know. I guess. I think I pitched a game in Oakland two or three years ago, down 2-0, going 2-0 and we won 1-0 and that was a pretty good game, too. I'm just out there trying to pitch. They asked me to get a couple of outs, I said sure. I didn't know there was going to be people at first and third with nobody out, and down 4-0 to Pedro. Just the circumstances and the way that game played out and the way that series played out was just unique. That was last year and we've got to play now. I'm just going to go out there and try to pitch.

MIKE MUSSINA: I think the general personality of the team is pretty similar. You know, I think that all feeds off of Joe. Joe and Mel and Brian Cashman and guys that have been here through this whole thing, we still approach it the same way. We work counts, we get a pitch we can hit. This year we're just hitting more home runs than we have in a while, but I think our general approach and our general character is pretty much the same. You know, if things were wavering, I don't think we would have been able to win 101 games, if things are really changing too drastically. And even with the turnover, it's pretty impressive that we can still go out there and win 100 ball games.

MIKE MUSSINA: I think he's really learned a lot about pitching in a very short amount of time. I think he knows he has good stuff. When you can throw 95 miles an hour and throw a 72-mile-an-hour changeup off of that and have some idea of where the ball is going, you're going to have pretty good success. He's strong, he's smart, he knows what he wants to do. You know, he's hot. I mean, he knows, when you get rolling, just want to keep rolling and he feels good about himself, and success breeds confidence. And he's got a lot of confidence right now, and his team and everybody else has confidence in him.

MIKE MUSSINA: I think when you play 162 games in six months, you're going to have things like that. You're going to have -- you're going to win five and six in a row, you're going to loses two or three in a row. I don't know if it gets blown out of proportion. I think we know when we're not playing well. I think we recognize it. I think -- I think sometimes, you know, this is New York and this is the Yankees and we've been successful here for nine or ten years in a row, and it's just all part of it. So we just kind of let it happen and keep going out there and playing ball.