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AL CHAMPIONSHIP SERIES: ANGELS v YANKEES

October 17, 2009

Joe Girardi

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: Game Two

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Joe Girardi.

Q. Joe, do you have a plan in place as far as rain delay goes with A.J.; short one, long one, will I keep him in, will I take him out?
JOE GIRARDI: I mean, you have overall rules what you'll do with certain guys. I talked about yesterday that we have the benefit of having the mound right underneath -- a mound inside our clubhouse that we can keep guys going. Usually look at 45 minutes kind of being -- you teeter around that how much longer do you go after that? But we'll approach it as it goes. Some of it will depend how far he is into the game as well. But you have to be smart about it.

Q. Joe, who is your catcher and who is your DH?
JOE GIRARDI: Our lineup today is Jeet, Johnny, Tex, Alex, Matsui, Swisher, Cano, Cabrera, Molina.

Q. Joe, you mentioned the mound. How does that work? Does A.J. throw some? What do you do?
JOE GIRARDI: If we want him to we can have him throw an inning or so underneath, kind of keep it like the game is going along. But if you do that, you shorten the amount of pitches that you let him throw.

Q. Just a follow-up on the lineup, Joe. How easy a decision or difficult was Molina a catcher and Matsui a DH?
JOE GIRARDI: It's something that we talked about.
Molina caught A.J. in the last round. One of the things we talked about from day one when we came into Spring Training was to get to where we want -- sometimes you have to make some sacrifices. And our players have done that all year long. We've had guys that in the beginning of Spring Training didn't think they were going to get as much playing time as they thought. They ended up getting a ton. We have had different center fielders. We've sat guys from time to time.
As far as DH-ing Matsui over Posada, both of them have a small sample against Saunders. Matsui is a lot more experienced as a DH, so we thought we would go with him.

Q. Just with the Angels, Joe, looking ahead, the addition of Kazmir, what kind of impact does that -- has that brought to their rotation and the matchup with your team?
JOE GIRARDI: Well, I think one of the things that it gave them was five starters that can give them length. When you look at the guys that they have had. And they have had some injuries. Escobar, I don't think he pitched the whole year. He was one of the guys that they were counting on. So it gave them five guys they knew they could get length from.
Kazmir has lot of experience against our club and has had some success. He knows our club very well and that's what it gives the Angels, someone very familiar with our lineup.

Q. Joe, CC said yesterday that the rest he got in September sort of led to how he's pitched in the postseason. At what point do you determine whether you can use him in Game 4? How much stress do you think he was under or did he go through last night?
JOE GIRARDI: We'll talk about it when we start getting through -- if we know we get through this game and what's going to happen to our rotation. We have an off day to prepare what we're going to do.
As far as stressing him last night, he threw 113 pitches. He was probably on about his eighth day or whatever it was. So physically, I think he's very good. I didn't think we really pushed him too far yesterday. I think when you start to get to 120, above 120 you start to push a guy. And we did not do that yesterday.

Q. Joe, the clubhouse last night seemed almost surprisingly quiet after a big win after Game 1. Are players just aware that the race just took off? They're not even at the quarter pole yet?
JOE GIRARDI: When I walked in, it seemed pretty normal to me. Maybe guys got out of there quick because it was kind of late. Some of our guys like to eat at home. So, I mean, it's getting kind of late. But I think our guys understand it's just one game. This is a long series. We know this is a very difficult series, and you don't make too much of it.

Q. Joe, in football usually when you have a warm-weather or dome team play in the northeast late in the season, weather is considered a significant factor. I know baseball is a different animal. How much of an advantage do you think you have when you have a warm-weather team playing in these conditions this time of year?
JOE GIRARDI: The one thing that both teams go through in the month of April and May, for them if they're on the road, they're going to play in cold weather. I think both teams are familiar with playing in cold weather. For us, it was pretty warm most of the year. I didn't think we played in a lot of cold weather. That might have been the worst evening we played in all year long. We had one day in Kansas City that was fairly cold. So I don't think it's such a huge advantage because they do play in cold weather cities in April. And we were fortunate -- two of the teams in our division that you play early have domes. One of them is actually in a warm place. But -- and when we went to Boston earlier it was 80 degrees. It was one of our hottest days. So I really don't think it's much of an advantage.

Q. Considering the weather, have you flown Andy ahead or will you fly him ahead?
JOE GIRARDI: We have not flown him ahead yet. Depending on what happens, we will talk about that. But we have not flown him ahead yet.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you thank you very much.
JOE GIRARDI: Thank you.

End of FastScripts

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