AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ANGELS v TWINS

October 7, 2002

Kevin Appier

KEVIN APPIER: I didn't see a ton. I saw bits and pieces of almost all the games. But it didn't surprise me at all that they were able to beat them, granted, the A's are a really good team. The Twins are not only a good team, but they probably don't get as much exposure as the A's did with their -- because they had three big starters, just guys with more notoriety from previous years than the Twins did. But this year, the Twins played awesome. Playing them, you know, they were one of our toughest teams to play against. It didn't surprise me at all they were able to pull it out.

KEVIN APPIER: Well, you saw this coming. They kind of did what Cleveland did a long time ago - they had a number of prospects that were brought up and I guess Terry Steinbach, I saw him talking last night, he finished his career with a whole bunch of younger guys. All those younger guys now have three, four, five years of experience and they're very good Major League players. So you have a whole team that's come up together and has kind of come into their prime together. It's not surprising they're in this situation whatsoever.

KEVIN APPIER: Well, you definitely have to keep fields in consideration. But not too much. I mean, you still got to work within your game plan. You may be able to slightly alter it. But as fast as this field is and the baggy, it's still not, you know, extremely small in rightfield. The turf, you really can't put that too much in play. The bounce, to home plate, the outfielders have to be more concerned about that. You can't concern yourself too much with the turf. You hope that anything that may work in their favor, hopefully we can get more bounces and stuff for us (smiling).

KEVIN APPIER: Well, I remember in the early '90s it was extremely loud here. But now being playoffs, odds are it will fill the place. Probably the loudest game I've pitched in. I've pitched in full stadiums, but inside The Dome, it's going to be that much more intense. It's easy to block that out. The biggest problem is going to be communication for the fielders on the fly balls, coupled with, you know, trying to see the ball in the roof. That's probably where, you know, the biggest difference is going to lie. As far as pitching, it's not a factor.

KEVIN APPIER: Well, obviously his stuff is amazing. He has really hard fastball, it's moving all over the place. Throws a cutter off that. Then his breaking balls, he has an infinite number of breaking balls. 20-year-old kid, he's put in -- Scioscia tested him right away, put him in tight situations in the regular season. He came through fine. Then, you know, he came in the playoffs and he had kind of an unsuccessful first inning, didn't bother his confidence at all. Came out next inning, shut him down. The other day, he came out, didn't have his stuff working, his command was off. He was able to pull it together, he kept his composure and did a great job getting out of the situation. So, yeah, he's a mentally tough kid. And, you know, it's good that we have him here.

KEVIN APPIER: I think the biggest thing is what we didn't do, and that's panic. You know, and start pressing. We all knew that we had a good club and how we were playing then was not reflective of our ability. You know, people didn't start running around, freaking out or anything. We just kept, you know, playing ball and things turned for us.

KEVIN APPIER: Well, it compares. I mean, what little postseason experience I had beforehand was, you know, with the A's. You know, that was tremendous. You know, this year has been a great year. What was the other part of the question?

KEVIN APPIER: Oh, enjoy it. It's definitely not like a sit-back-and-kind-of-smell-the-roses-type thing, or flowers. You don't really view the whole picture. You kind of stay within what you need to do, how you need to prepare, what you're going to have to do. Even though you're aware of, you know, it's a great situation, stuff like that, you're so focused on your business at hand, I don't think that you really fully enjoy it until almost after the fact.

KEVIN APPIER: Actually, that's part of what makes the Twins so tough. Their whole line-up, they're similar to us -- they're like us in that way, there's not one or two guys that are the key guys in their line-up, that if you shut them down, you're pretty much able to shut the whole team down. They're not like that. They can beat you one through nine. That's been one of our strengths this year, is that any one of our guys could beat you. No, not like -- no, there's not a certain guy that we have that with.