AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v YANKEES

October 5, 2003

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: Half my guys aren't here yet. They don't know what time the game is yet, so we're still waiting for them to show up. We just found out just a few minutes ago. Just kidding, you know that (laughter). They're excited. We were here last year in the same situation. Yankees, we know they're a great baseball team. Wells is another one of their great pitchers. We got Santana going. It's going to be very exciting for us. We're looking forward to this. This is what baseball is all about. When you got your back against the wall, you come out kicking a little bit, and that's what we're going to try to do.

RON GARDENHIRE: We hope so. That's why I took him out after 50 pitches (laughter). Honestly, when you're facing veteran hitters like the Yankees have, a lot of very good hitters, it's going to come to Johan making pitches. He's got great stuff and he's going to have to make a lot of good pitches whether they've seen him or not. You make mistakes against him, you'll see what happens. They bang it around pretty well. We've pitched very well in this series. To hold the Yankees to eight runs I think it is in these games, we've pitched very well. We're very proud of our pitching staff. We think that's what we do best, pitch and catch the ball. Our goal is to try to find out how to get a few hits with some men on today and also do the same thing, keep pitching.

RON GARDENHIRE: I would never try to pitch a guy if he's hurting or anything like that. I can only go by what Johan has told me. He feels great. He's ready to go. Like anything, when you have a cramp in your leg, you're going have to some soreness in your muscles. Supposedly he's fine. If it acts up again, it happens, he's out. I would never take a chance with a young man. We're just hoping he goes out there. The last time this happened, he came back and pitched seven or eight innings the next time out. We just hope that's going to be the case today.

RON GARDENHIRE: Oh, yeah. We made changes (laughter). We mixed it up a little bit. I moved Torii Hunter into the four slot; AJ Pierzynski into the fifth slot; Michael Cuddyer is going to DH, sixth slot; Jacque Jones in the seventh slot; Corey Koskie eight; Guzman nine. We mixed it up just a little bit. I fought for my defense. I kept my defense out there. That's the one thing I wanted to -- I think Matt LeCroy has been swinging out of the zone a little bit, kind of got out of himself a little bit. Put the kid in there. Cuddyer normally stays on the ball pretty decent. Give him a chance to whack. Torii has been after the ball. He's been hitting the ball. We're trying to mix it up a little bit. Not do too awful much as far as my defense went, which we didn't. Hopefully we'll get those guys in there. Hopefully we'll get a little offense going, too.

RON GARDENHIRE: Like I said, I talked to my hitting coach, a couple other coaches. What we're seeing is he's out of the zone a little bit. It's not that he's just missing the balls; he's chasing pitches a little out of the zone. He's trying so hard, just like the rest of these guys are. We'll just give him a little bit of a break today. It also takes the pressure of me having to pinch hit for my backup catcher and take him out of the game as a DH. There's that pressure out. I won't have to answer that question now.

RON GARDENHIRE: No. We've been here before. We've played a lot of baseball games this year. We've come up against a lot of tough situations. We've been in a lot of the meaningful games. Our guys are ready to play. They know what's at stake. We're going to go out just like we always have. We're going to try to be loosey-goosey, go have some fun. It just doesn't get any better. You're playing at home against the New York Yankees. That's a pretty good scenario to go out and try to have some fun and win a baseball game, in all honesty.

RON GARDENHIRE: I think a little bit of all that you just said, his experience, his demeanor, the way he handles himself. He's mentally tough. He can do just about anything you can ask of him. We try not to have to use the short day stuff, all that. That's just the way it falls here. He's the kind of guy that when he gets the ball, he's going to give you everything he has. He knows what he's doing on the mound. He's not going to try to do too much. He's going to stay within himself. That's why you put him in that situation.

RON GARDENHIRE: Maybe if the game had been late night, we might have been able to do something like that. But since it's an earlier game today, he'll just travel with the team. But we had talked about that, sure, making plans. You never know what's going to happen. Sure, we had talked about that. But, no, he's going to be with us, I believe.