AL DIVISION SERIES: TIGERS VS GUARDIANS

October 10, 2024

Stephen Vogt

Comerica Park

Cleveland Guardians

Postgame 4 Press Conference

Cleveland - 5, Detroit - 4

Q. Stephen, can you just share some of your top-of-mind thoughts after that thriller?

STEPHEN VOGT: Wow. Just such a great baseball game. I feel like every game this series has been a good baseball game, and for our guys to score first, they come back, take the lead, we come back, back and forth, back and forth. And just tremendous job by our bullpen, guys off the bench, defense. It was just a well-played baseball game on both sides, and a lot of fun.

Q. Stephen, David Fry had been 0-3 with three strikeouts against Brieske. What did you see in the matchup there that you wanted to go to at that point?

STEPHEN VOGT: That's more about the left on left versus right on right, and David has been very good versus right-hand pitching and Beau Brieske has pitched really well against us all year.

And for us in that moment, we wanted to get the right-on-right matchup, and David Fry is one of the best baseball players in this league. He's just a baseball player. You saw it tonight. Pinch-hit off the bench, home run, gets the safety squeeze down, game on the line.

You just can't say enough about what David has meant to us this year. And the personal history is huge, but you look at that you can say, oh, no, he owns them or he's due. And again, like we talked about yesterday, you have to take your shots, and fortunately one of our shots worked out today.

Q. With Clase, how important was it for him to get back out there and kind of get back on track? And in an elimination game, were you going to use him for more than an inning as long as the situation dictated it?

STEPHEN VOGT: Yeah. Obviously, it's win or go home. You want your best pitchers out there as long as possible. Tanner gave us four-plus phenomenal, and then the big four in the bullpen took it from there and did a great job. We had talked about before the game Emmanuel getting four to five outs if we needed that, and tonight we did. And he was outstanding.

Q. Stephen, you guys used the safety squeeze throughout the season. Just how important is it to get that run, obviously, when you get the run scored, but how important you guys have done it all season and it's not a surprise for your players?

STEPHEN VOGT: Yeah. Our guys have worked on it all year. All of our guys work on bunting. It's a tool that we need to use to tack on that extra run to add on to the lead. And for David, when I talked to him, I said, Hey, do you want to do this? He said, Oh, yeah, I've bunted a lot in my life. I'm confident.

And Rocchio, with the way Rocchio has won, swinging the bat right now, his at-bats have been phenomenal. You can't speak enough about that. Perfect jump, perfect slide. Everything went right on that play.

Q. Stephen, just the guys that we just were talking to in here, how important are their successes to the totality of what you guys are doing as a team?

STEPHEN VOGT: I mean, Jose and Clase are -- they're our best two players. They have been all year. And for Jose to get that homer, that had to feel so good for him, and it energized our dugout like you wouldn't believe.

And Emmanuel, he had the blip the other day, and he's going to get way too much negative publicity for that because that was one blip on the radar of an historic season that he's put together, and tonight was another story of that.

Just the thing I love about Emmanuel is he doesn't care if they score. He just wants to get the win. He doesn't care when he pitches, he just wants to pitch. He's done that for us all year. Up eight, tied, down. It doesn't matter. He just wants to pitch, and he's been outstanding all year.

Q. Will you start Matthew Boyd on Saturday?

STEPHEN VOGT: We haven't really talked, I mean, tonight -- we needed to get through tonight. We're going to reconvene tomorrow. We have a number of options that we can go with, but we'll have an answer tomorrow.

Q. Stephen, what is it about the postseason that kind of brings out the best in Kwan? He's on a streak right now?

STEPHEN VOGT: (Knocking.) I mean, Steven Kwan has been phenomenal all year long. He's a big-time player. We saw it throughout the whole year, and Kwany has been our spark plug, continuing to be it. And when you're in the postseason, you have to take what the pitcher gives you. You can't try and do too much. And Kwany is the epitome of that and has been all year long.

You go up and down the lineup. We've had a number of guys chip in in these first four games all year long, and Kwan is the spark plug that gets it going.