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AL WILD CARD GAME: ORIOLES v RANGERSOctober 5, 2012Michael YoungARLINGTON, TEXAS: Game Day Q. What do you do to prepare for a game like this? MICHAEL YOUNG: The basis is obviously fundamentals. The last thing you want to do is go too heavily on a scouting report or too heavily on video when you haven't seen a guy. We haven't seen a release point in a while. I think we have some Spring Training to go off of since the last time we saw him in a regular season game. The basic thing is focus on fundamentals, execute our game plan. If we do that we'll be happy with our approach. Hopefully good things happen after that. Q. How would you say the day off and the team morale is going into today? MICHAEL YOUNG: Great, we're excited. Postseason starts today. We're excited about the opportunity we have. We're ready to play. This is a fun part of the year for us. This is a fun part of the year for any team, to get to the postseason and have an opportunity to win a world championship. It's right in front of us now. Every team in the postseason controls their own destiny, and we're no different. We're looking forward to the opportunity, happy to be here and we're going to go out and play our own game. Q. How have you seen (Inaudible) evolve over the years? MICHAEL YOUNG: He's been great. I've never seen a rookie pitcher before. First time I've ever seen him. Usually it's the opposite. Usually rookie pitchers start to slow down a little bit in September. They've never played in September before. This is the first I've ever seen a guy pick up his game and step it up as the season progressed. So it's been a lot of fun to watch. He's made some great adjustments and obviously we have a ton of confidence in him. He's on the mound. We like where we're at with him out there for us. Q. What did you do yesterday to relax? And did you personally need a day off? MICHAEL YOUNG: No, didn't need a day off. What did I do? I spent some time with my kids, went to a karate lesson, not for me, for my son. For me would have been actually kind of nice actually. But that was it. Laid low, spent time with my family, like I usually do on off‑days. Q. The last couple handfuls of games Hamilton's numbers have been down, he's struck out more. Do you believe that his performance has affected the team a little bit here at the end? MICHAEL YOUNG: Well, I mean, any time‑‑ we obviously depend on Josh a lot. We depend on everybody in our lineup a lot, but no, I wouldn't pin it on Josh. Not to mention the regular season is all flushed down the toilet. Those games are over with. This is a brand new season now. We look forward to the fact that the postseason presents new opportunities. It has nothing to do with what happened in the regular season. Those games are completely done with. They don't count for anything right now, they shouldn't count for anything right now. And we've been down this road before. We know what it's like to play postseason games, we know what it's like to start a new season. So no, as far as the end of the regular season, it's not on Josh. If it was on any of us, it wouldn't really matter right now anyway. Q. Along with the excitement of starting the postseason, how difficult is it to suppress the feeling of what would happen if you don't win tonight? What would the feeling be not only in your clubhouse but in all of north Texas? MICHAEL YOUNG: Well, we've lost a Game 7 of the World Series before. Nothing gets worse than that. As a matter of fact we lost Game 6 of the World Series and nothing gets worse than that. We're not really concerned. We don't play games thinking what would happen if we lose. If you have any kind of fear in this game you're going to lose. We don't think like that. This is a very competitive group. If we were wired that way, if we were mentally weak, we wouldn't be in this position right now anyway. We wouldn't be in the postseason. We would've got beaten a long time ago. We would've been left for dead a long time ago. A very mentally tough group. We're a very competitive group, and expect anything but the best out of us, so we don't approach games thinking how we're going to freely if it goes wrong, We approach it thinking what happens if we do well. Q. How much do you guys benefit from having Beltre? MICHAEL YOUNG: He's a great player. He's the best third baseman I've ever seen, so any time we can have a completely healthy Adrian Beltre it's a huge benefit to our team. He closes really well like he did last year, and any time he's on the field in our lineup, we feel pretty good about the position we're in. Obviously it's a big plus for us any time he's out there. Q. You've been here through the good and the bad. Is there any one message that you would deliver to this team before you go out? MICHAEL YOUNG: Well, it's not just like another game, it is the postseason now. You know, I know my teammates really well. We know each other really well. I think that's one good thing about our club. There's a lot of trust in there. We've built up a lot of equity with each other. We know what it's like to play big games together, and we trust the guy next to us. If something doesn't go right we make quick adjustments. We always expect to go out there and play our game and play to win. Each time we're on the field we expect to get results. No, I think there's going to be constant communication by the guys on the team. There's no need to have this massive team meeting about what the postseason presents because we know what it means. We know every game is a big game. Like I said, we're looking forward to it. There's no need for us to change anything. We want to make sure we make good adjustments and improve our style of play, but no need to have any huge overhauls to our style. Q. (Inaudible). MICHAEL YOUNG: No, not at all. Not at all. As the game goes on, we're a very‑‑ like I said, we're a competitive team. As the game goes on, we get them during the game from guys. So we don't have to have any 5 o'clock speeches. We know when it's game time, and that's what we'll be ready to go. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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