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AL DIVISION SERIES: TIGERS v YANKEES

October 3, 2011

Joe Girardi

DETROIT, MICHIGAN: Game Three

Q. I assume your bullpen is rested tonight, Joe?
JOE GIRARDI: Yes. It is. Obviously, Wade threw a bunch of pitches and Ayala has thrown two days in a row, but our bullpen is rested.

Q. Your main guys.
JOE GIRARDI: Yes.

Q. Ironically, this could be a night with CC going, he's usually a night where you're not necessarily going to have to use these guys again, or at least all of them.
JOE GIRARDI: Well, you never know what's going to happen in the game. The thing is this could be a very close game and you can be in an extra innings as well. That's the type of game that sometimes when you get hooked up in this type of matchup that you can expect. Could be another day it rains, too.

Q. Joe, you've got A.J. going tomorrow. Obviously, you had to have a couple of conversations telling him he's going to relieve and then telling him he's going to start. Do you get any sense from him he was so agitated about going to the bullpen he's going to use that as motivation to pitch tomorrow?
JOE GIRARDI: I don't know. Who told you he was agitated about going to the bullpen?

Q. Wouldn't you be?
JOE GIRARDI: No. Here's the thing: The one thing that you preach when you are part of a team is you do whatever you can to help your club win. That was the attitude A.J. said, "I'll do whatever you want." Obviously, there are things you are more comfortable doing. But A.J. was willing to do whatever we needed. We explained to him what we were doing. We were only using three starters. That's why he wasn't going to start. He was never agitated.

Q. Joe, how do you think CC's brief outing on Friday will play into tonight? And will you be watching him any differently than you normally would?
JOE GIRARDI: Yeah, this is a great part about being a manager, because if one of the starters struggles, the first thing they're going to ask us is, do you think it had anything to do with Friday? That's all part of it.
Their normal routine is to start, throw on their second day and then start three days later. It's almost what CC did. So will it have a huge effect on him physically? I don't think so. Is that going to determine how he pitches? I don't think so. I think what's going to happen is what's going to happen.

Q. Joe, with Cano not getting the hit in the ninth inning yesterday, he hasn't had a lot of high-profile failures or anything like that, whatever you want to call it. After something like that do you get curious about how he responds the next day?
JOE GIRARDI: You know, I think sometimes people equate whether you get a hit or not as failure. I don't necessarily think so. I think Robbie had a pretty good at-bat against an awful good closer. Fouled off a number of pitches and just got on top of a split a little bit. I don't think it will affect Robbie. We all know Robbie. Robbie has been in big situations before. You play in our division, you're in big situations before. No one is going to do it every time. That's just the nature of the game. But I think Robbie would relish that situation again.

Q. Joe, what are you seeing in Alex in his at-bats right now?
JOE GIRARDI: I thought the first day against Fister his at-bats were good. He hits the ball to center field, a lot of days that ball was gone. For whatever reason the ball didn't carry to center field that day. He hit a hard ball to second base that day. I can't tell you that we really squared up a whole lot of balls against Scherzer yesterday. Jeet had the one that comes to mind in the first inning, the slider he hit.
I think the big thing is when you see the zero and you see the name, I think people make a lot of it because it's two games and he hasn't gotten a hit. They have pitched to Robbie a little with Alex being there, and that was one of the reasons we put him there. But as I say, I thought he had good at-bats the first day. We didn't have a lot of great at-bats against Scherzer yesterday. So it's hard to measure that.

Q. Did you or your players have any reaction to Valverde's comments about the season being over?
JOE GIRARDI: I think you can get caught up in comments. The big thing to me about a player's comments and what a player says is don't let it change you emotionally. Don't let it fire you up so much that you can't do what you're supposed to do.
Players sometimes -- the one thing he said -- I wasn't in there, so I don't know the context of it. But you always talk about bulletin board material, the bottom line is you still got to go out and play the game and you got to win the game. I'm sure you wouldn't want someone not being confident in your team. That would be more disturbing for me than another thing. I don't get caught up in it. Our guys have to go out and play and we have to go out and beat them. That's what they're trying to do to us.
THE MODERATOR: Thank you, Joe.

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