AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS v ATHLETICS

October 2, 2002

Ron Gardenhire

RON GARDENHIRE: Am I glad it's over? Well, the game? Absolutely, nobody got hurt, except our feelings.

RON GARDENHIRE: We came, had a chance to win two today, so we are disappointed. We came out yesterday and we got a win, and I guess if you are going to look at it that way, that's fine. We didn't do very good today, that's disappointing. We are going home, we still got a chance, back to our ballpark, so it's a positive; that's it, we are one and one out here, I guess we did something okay. We are disappointed we did didn't win today, we get kind of waxed. I guess if you are going to get beat, might as well get waxed.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, Mulder mixes his pitches up very well, he changed speeds. When he gets in trouble, you can see him really pump the fastball, he is got one that sinks, one that cuts, he has got the slow curve ball, he has got the total package, that's why he wins a lot of baseball games. He is one of the tougher lefties in the league and, like I said, he can pitch out of the strike zone and still get you out because his ball moves so much. As far as starting Mays, Mays has been one of our starters here -- he was an All Star last year, came back off an injury and pitched pretty good. Today he didn't pitch very good, he didn't pitch a fastball enough and got behind in the count. There was a lot of long innings in there, a lot of long innings, but Mays has been throwing pretty doggone good for us. And the question you have there, do you start Kyle Lohse, which he can throw the baseball, too, and he has pitched well, but Mays deserved a shot to pitch in this and we feel very comfortable with him, and I still do. He just didn't get it done for us but he has pitched well for us.

RON GARDENHIRE: Outstanding. We didn't want to bring him in in the middle of an inning, I wanted to make sure that he started an inning, and that's why we got in that one situation with Tony out there, I had him ready out there. We could get him ready out there in a couple innings. Kyle Lohse throws the ball very hard and he is in a situation where the score is 9 to 1, so that's a little different situation, but don't take anything away from him, he throws it in there, and he goes right at hitters and that's what we needed. The other guys just didn't get it done today, but Joe Mays has been one of our best pitchers, he just had a bad day today, our baseball team had a bad day today, I had a bad day, I didn't do very well, either. Maybe I could have done something different.

RON GARDENHIRE: We sure hope it is, we hope it's really tough for them in the Metrodome starting Friday. We hope Reed will -- this is a great situation we are into with Reed, I know we are facing Zito, but we have got Reed going, who has been one of our better pitchers in the second half, so we are going home to a place where we play very good baseball. It's going to be an important game Friday and you go on from there. They have got some pretty -- as we have talked about before, they have got some great starters. Coming back on three days' rest, they feel they can do that. I am not comfortable with that with my pitching staff, I like the four guys we have got in there, and I have got Lohse coming out of the ballpark, but they feel comfortable with that and that's fine. We are going home, as I said, one and one. We are back to our ballpark, we play very well there, now we just have to go back and regroup and, hopefully, we will play a little better baseball game at home.

RON GARDENHIRE: It kind of got out of whack because we got behind early, and we were maybe trying to do a little bit too much. It takes away from the running a little bit, it takes away from being able to do -- but this guy is very tough, we hit some balls pretty decent, put some good swings out there, but we were not able to do a lot as far as trying to hit and run and things like that because we got behind, so that changed the game a little bit. I thought that we were out playing defense too much. When you are playing defense, standing out there long periods of time, it's tough to come out there and regroup as a hitter when you are standing out there. And we talk about that all the time, get the boys off the field. Today it didn't work out.

RON GARDENHIRE: Well, I thought he just kind of skirted around the zone a little too much today, he didn't go right at them, the first inning, second and third, you know, we tried to -- you don't want to throw Chavez anything, maybe a ground ball, give him a run, whatever, he has got a great sinker and then he sends a slider up there and the guy whacks it out of the ballpark, so he just didn't have his great command. He pitched through every inning, there was a couple guys on, and it was just long, long, long innings out there.