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MLB WORLD SERIES: RANGERS v CARDINALSOctober 23, 2011C.J. WilsonARLINGTON, TEXAS: Game Four Q. What do you think you can build on from your last start? It was a loss, but obviously an improvement over your previous postseason starts. C.J. WILSON: Yeah, I think the other day I got a good chance to see all their hitters in the lineup. The only guy I didn't really face was Craig. Obviously he's done some damage against us thus far in these first three games. But he'll be in the lineup, I guess, probably tomorrow against me. It's a chance for me to set some things straight for us as a team. Q. This potentially is your final start as a Texas Rangers pitcher. Have you considered that? And what do you think of your year so far in the system? C.J. WILSON: I haven't really thought about that at all. I'm just thinking about the team and where we're at and being in the World Series obviously, like there's no extra series after this. There's no galaxy series or universe series or whatever. Just trying to win tonight and win tomorrow and see what we can do back in St. Louis. Q. How would you sum up your postseason? As good as things went for you in the regular season, are you disappointed with your pitching in the postseason or have you been able to find a lot of positives in it? C.J. WILSON: You know, I'm somewhat of an optimist, but at the same time being a realist obviously it hasn't gone as well as I would have liked. I would have liked to have won every game and thrown a shutout every time because it would have made it easier on everyone else. Obviously if I threw a shutout the first game we'd be winning right now. But there's been a lot of good that's come of it in terms of personal development. I feel like I've learned a little bit more mechanically because obviously at this point in the season I've thrown 250 innings or something like that, so it's, like, the refinement that you get as a starting pitcher from continually going out there and throwing, I feel like it's helping me grow so that next year I can be better than I was this year. Q. Tomorrow when you take the mound, it's probably going to be the most important start of your career. C.J. WILSON: True story. Q. Whether the series is tied at two apiece or whether the Cardinals are up 3-1, will that have a lot of impact on your game plan? We're hoping for a little insight on who you might go after or pitch around, just something about your game plan. C.J. WILSON: No, I think you have to look at every start as in its own little bubble. There's nothing I can do to un-lose a game. I can only win the game that I pitch in. That's the only thing I can do. I can't make up for any other games that I don't play in, you know what I mean, or games that I previously lost or whatever. The only thing I can do is go out there and pitch the best I can, you know. And strategy-wise, I never talk about that. So I'm still not going to talk about that. Q. Whether it's tied or they're one game away from clinching, will that affect your game plan? C.J. WILSON: You know, for me it's like I go out there and throw until they take the ball away. So I'm going to try to throw as many pitches as I can and stay in the game as long as I can, no matter what the score is. I feel like if I pitch my best, if I pitch as well as I've pitched at certain points during the season, it gives us a good chance to win the game, regardless of what the record is. Obviously our goal at this point is to go back to St. Louis with more baseball to play. Whether it's one game or two games remains to be seen, but it all has to do with how well we play tonight. Q. As well as you've pitched the last two years and as far as you've come as a starting pitcher, I know you aspire to be regarded as a great starting pitcher. Do you believe these games and the game tomorrow night will help cement that in the public conscious as well as your peers? C.J. WILSON: That's what the commercial says, that legends are born in the postseason or whatever. I had some great games last year. I had one bad one, and I still only ended up with one win. At the end of the game, whoever wins or loses depends on what the score is, and sometimes in a tight game, if you come out of the game and it's a one-run game, either winning or losing, unless you throw the whole game, you can't control that. You can't control what happens after you come out. It's sort of one of those things that's very difficult to process sometimes as a starting pitcher because you feel like everything is on your shoulders, you know what I mean? That's your job, to go out there and suck it up, either you get beaten down literally or figuratively or you stand strong and stand tall. But like I said, there's only so much stuff you can control. Obviously last night there was some stuff that got away from us as a team, but we have to do the best we can to stay within ourselves and not let one single play -- no matter if it's a good play or a bad play, it can't define or game. We can't let that happen. As a starting pitcher you're always trying to rise above that. I've had some unfortunate luck this year with the ball hitting the base in Detroit, but I'm not going to let that affect me long-term. It affects the game to a point, but at some point I feel like I'll develop as a pitcher so that I can overcome those situations, you know what I mean? That's the thing that's hurt me this year is I've had freak plays that have cost me wins and runs and stuff, and a lot of my losses during the season were the same thing. If you're only losing games in that manner, then you're doing something right. The game I pitched against Carpenter in St. Louis I thought was a well-pitched game on both sides. It just happens to be that they scored one more run than we did. But I'm looking forward to pitching a lot better in Game 5. Q. What's your take on facing a team back to back basically and whether that's an advantage for you? And also, what do you take out of the last couple of games and what you saw happen especially last night with it getting away? C.J. WILSON: Well, last night was just one of those games where obviously runs were pretty easy to come by for both teams. We ended up getting like 13 or 14 hits and they obviously got even more. You know, you really can't get bummed out if you give up one run, I guess is the point. Personally I think when you face a team over and over again, there's always something you can learn. Certain weaknesses are going to get exploited, like they've held some of our hitters down using the same type of pitch patterns and we've done the same thing to some of their hitters, as well. I don't know, but I guess during the season you see the same team, like we see Anaheim. I've pitched against Anaheim like 25 or 30 times over the past couple years, so it just is the same thing, I think. One of the reasons the St. Louis-Milwaukee series was so ugly from an ERA standpoint was because those guys play each other so much, so there were no surprises. I think we still have some wrinkles left to develop in our clubhouse for them. We have some extra stuff that they haven't seen yet. Q. Like in 10 or 12 days you're going to be a free agent. Do you ever allow yourself to think about the uncertainty that's coming up? Or if you don't, how do you keep that blocked out of your mind? C.J. WILSON: Because as soon as the question gets up I start thinking about something else. I don't even pay attention to it. I heard a story that like somebody asked Tony about what he's doing next year and he went like this. So I kind of do the same thing, but I just picture myself like surfing or whatever, somewhere else. So as soon as you start talking and I hear the word free agency, I just go (hums), and I don't let it register. You've got to think about it this way, right: There's nothing I can do to control, like, what happens, what any team offers me or what any team wants from me or whatever, all I can do is say, hey, I'm going to be a starting pitcher next year. I'm obviously not going to be a second baseman or a closer or a right fielder. That's the only thing I'm certain about, is that I'm going to be a left-handed pitcher next year. Who it's for, I don't know yet. A lot of that has to do with the fact that I've been so focused on this, and obviously there's rules about tampering. So you guys can write whatever you want to write, but I'm not actually going to, like, respond to it. Q. As a player and a professional athlete, because y'all were here last year, do y'all look at this as either a accomplishment or a failure, kind of the old Buffalo Bills syndrome? C.J. WILSON: Ouch. Really? Q. They were a great team. C.J. WILSON: There's a million different ways you can look at it, but if you were going to ask anybody that was in baseball who was the most successful franchise of the last 15 years and people would probably say the Braves because they won 15 consecutive titles or whatever, right? So whether or not you win the World Series every year like the way the Yankees did in the '50s, not every team is going to do that. Sometimes you have to accept the fact that -- look at Detroit, right, like Detroit came into the series against us and they were all banged up and they had a lot of injuries and stuff. Every team is kind of in that boat. Every team kind of skidding into the world Sears. It's very rare that guys come in and everyone is a hundred percent healthy. In that sense if your best players are banged up, you're going to get out of them whatever you can, but it's not going to be batting practice out there. We're facing good pitching and they're facing good hitters and all that stuff. It's not as easy as everybody wishes it was. If it was easy, then you'd see more parity and you would see more different teams, like, in the playoffs every year. But as it is, there's only so many teams that rotate through the top spots because there's a certain makeup of a team that you have to have in terms of mental resiliency and physical talent and stuff in order to get to the playoffs and beat teams in the playoffs. But we're -- man, like the long-term swing that I've seen here in the last ten years being a Ranger is enormous. And for us to repeat as American League champs obviously is a big deal. So we still feel like the series is 2-1, it's anybody's series at this point. And we're not really worried about, like, the fact that people are calling us whatever they're calling us. I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. But football is different because it all comes down to one game, and at the same point, I do remember somebody missed a field goal in one of those Bills games with a chance to win it, and it's not the same thing in baseball. It's not like last night somebody came up with the option to hit a seven-run home run in the ninth inning. It just didn't happen. There's many more factors that go into winning or losing a baseball game other than one play, and that's the mentality that we have to have. Q. Obviously the intentional walk is a manager's call. When you pitch against a hitter like Pujols, who's as hot as he is, what is your comfort level with pitching around him and not giving him a strike? C.J. WILSON: Well, I did both, you know, in my game. I went right after him his first at-bat, and then he came up again and I accidentally beaned him in the ankle with a slider. So I've done all three, I've done the intentional walk, the accidental hit by pitch and the go right after him. And when I beaned him, he ended up scoring. When I walked him, he got out. And when I pitched to him I got him out. So I think, like I've said a bunch of times, if you make good pitches on a good hitter, you're going to lessen his chances. If you throw it down the middle, you're going to increase his chances. And last night all his home runs were pitches like right down the middle, at least as I was watching in slow motion in the clubhouse or in the video room that's what they looked like. As long as we stay out of the middle of the plate, then we are going to give ourselves a better chance. At the same point if he's their singular guy that's capable of hitting three home runs in a game, then you've got to be smart. I've used strategic unintentional walks or unintentional-intentional walks before, like, when Punto was up and then I'll pitch around him to get to Carpenter or something like that. That's a very typical strategy move. So depending on who's batting behind him, whether it's Berkman or Holliday or whoever, I know what I'm going to do, but like I said, I'm not going to talk about it. It depends on the game situation because I feel like I've done all three and I know which one I'm capable of doing the best. I know if I try to hit him, I'm going to hit him. If I try to walk him, I'm probably going to walk him. If I try to get him out, I can probably pitch towards the edges of the strike zone and make it more difficult. But that's just me. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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