Pregame chatter

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. -- Managers and Game 2 starters held Q&A's with the media before Game 1 of the American League Championship Series Friday at Tropicana Field. Click on a name below to see the transcript from that individual, as provided by ASAP Sports.

Terry Francona | Joe Maddon | Scott Kazmir | Josh Beckett

Terry Francona

Q: Why is Beckett so good in the postseason? I realize he's a good pitcher in the regular season, too, but what do you think it is about him that causes him to amp it up even more when you get to October?

TERRY FRANCONA: I don't think that the idea of playing in these games of this magnitude are too big for him. I mean, I think he thrives on that and he enjoys it.

But I think you have to be a very good pitcher to begin with, or regardless of how you feel mentally. If you don't physically have the stuff to do it, you're probably kind of running upstream a little bit.

Q: As a follow-up, where is Beckett at this point physically, and what do you expect out of him?

TERRY FRANCONA: He's fine physically. The farther he's removed from his problems of last week, he can concentrate on his routine and concentrate on pitching instead of trying to get better. He went through a week where we had targeted that Sunday against the Angels, but getting to Sunday wasn't the easiest thing in the world.

I mean, he threw a pretty extended side, he did a long toss, but up to that point he hasn't touched the ball. That was tough on him.

Q: On the turf here, do you play your outfield any different in terms of like deeper or bunch the gaps or anything like that?

TERRY FRANCONA: No, we really don't. You know, this isn't the turf of old where in Montreal or Toronto where it was kind of like the real quick -- the carpet that was laid over the concrete. This simulates grass as much as you can, and it's really not that much different.

Q: I know Kazmir has been a pretty effective pitcher from the time he hit the majors, but what have you seen from him, from his rookie year until now? What about his development have you noticed the most?

TERRY FRANCONA: Well, what I've really noticed is he's pitching tomorrow. We're going to try to work on Shields tonight. You're getting a little ahead of me.

Q: Before that Angels series and actually during the Angels series, you talked a little bit about Justin Masterson and the fact that the Angels had so many righties in a row in the lineup and how he was going to factor in the bullpen. Looking at the way the Rays lineup is constructed, does that accentuate Manny Delcarmen's series, given the effectiveness he's had against lefthanded batters this year?

TERRY FRANCONA: Yes. Both those guys you just talked about, if we're to have success, are going to have a big hand in it, but you'll more likely see a Manny Delcarmen come in in the middle of an inning just because of the lefthanders, as opposed to Justin.

Q: With Lowell out, does Cora's role change at all? Are we likely to see him start a game? I know he started one of the Division Series, but have you thought that out yet?

TERRY FRANCONA: Thought it out, no. Thought about it, yeah. I'm not sure quite where I'm at with that. It could happen. We could certainly move Lowrie to third, move Youk to first on certain nights. I don't know if it's going to happen, but it certainly could.

Q: Going back to Manny for one second, the second half of the year, he really seemed to kind of put things together a little bit. What do you point to as some of the things that started working for him or that clicked for him in the second half of the year?

TERRY FRANCONA: He threw strikes with all of his pitches. You know, coming into spring training we thought he had such a good winner. He was primed to really go get 'em. He came in in great shape, and you see guys maturing, and then he faced Frank Thomas, and Frank pretty much derailed April all by himself. So we had to work back from that a little bit, and we needed to remind him at times how good we thought he was.

So I think his numbers took a little bit of a hit, and sometimes when that happens sometimes your confidence takes a hit, too. But when he's throwing strikes, he's got three pitches that he can attack lefties and righties with, and you're starting to see that more than you're not seeing it.

Joe Maddon

Q: Just to verify, "Start Me Up" this morning?

JOE MADDON: Absolutely. Well, actually this afternoon. Had a houseful this morning, didn't want to turn it up, so we did it when we came in the locker room this afternoon. Appreciate it.

Q: James Shields, do you have any pre-game rituals that you talk? Do you talk to him, do anything? Contact him in any way?

JOE MADDON: Stay clear. I learned that with him the first year I was around him. He's one of those -- you could talk to him a little bit, but he's the kind of guy that gets into his own little world, his own little focus, and he sits in the corner and you see the look on his face. There's certain starting pitchers you really try to avoid the day this they pitch. Others you can talk to. I think he's kind of a tweener, but I never try to talk to him. There's nothing I could tell him that's going to help. I could only injure him right now.

Q: Talking to Evan Longoria yesterday, he has such great perspective on everything he's accomplished this year. As a manager, what has impressed you the most about not necessarily what he's done on the field but his character?

JOE MADDON: It's his calmness and his sense of belonging. I mean, when you get a young man as talented as he is coming into the major leagues for the first time and performing at the level that he has and making the All-Star team, beyond all of his skill level, it's about how he carries himself. And when you talk to him how he approaches the day, and he feels like he belongs here. Often times it takes you more time to get a young player to feel that way.
He came kind of equipped with that. I think he knew he belongs here from the moment he signed. He just needed a little bit of time. But from the moment he's arrived, he's never indicated in any way that he doubted himself.

There's times he's had some problems this year. There's times he went through some struggles, particularly early on. He was hitting at a very low number and they were pitching him very well, and he was struggling, but he worked his way through it because he knew he belonged here, and I really believe in that.

Q: I just want to ask you, a little bit of housekeeping. Could you please list your lineup for us and how you came about setting it?

JOE MADDON: Lineup today is typical for us, Akinori, B.J., Carlos, Longo, Carl, Cliff, Navi, Gross, and Bartlett. Pitching is James Shields.

Q: Growing up in Hazelton, I don't know if I've ever read who you rooted for, whether it was the Pirates, Phillies or maybe somebody else.

JOE MADDON: Somebody else.

Q: Was it a New York team?

JOE MADDON: Nope. The St. Louis Cardinals.

Q: Well, anyway, there's been a lot of comparisons to the way your team has come of age this year and the '69 Mets, and I don't know, you were a 15-year-old back in Hazelton back in those days. I don't know how closely you followed that Mets miracle, but if you did, do you see any comparisons between your team and what happened with that team?

JOE MADDON: I followed it very closely on WOR, Watched Kiner's Corner every night. We had the cable back home, Uncle Carli had the cable up at the third base luncheon that you'd sneak in the lunchroom and get to watch the games. I was a big fan, actually.

The pitching staff was incredible. They had all those power arms and they had the great bullpen. The biggest thing obviously was that they kept beating the odds and that they continued to move forward obviously from the meager past that they had.

Primarily, you know what you remember from that most of all when you watch those games on television, you remember the guy that held up the signs. The guy that was the sign guy, I mean, you always waited for the TV guy to break to the sign guy to give you the message for the day, and a lot of it was about believing, obviously. I think Tug McGraw was involved in a lot of that stuff, too.

I remember primarily the fact that they played with a lot of heart. They always seemed to rise to an occasion and come back and win big games. Different guys, just like us, would play a big role. Tommie Agee and Swoboda. I believe that was the year Swoboda hit the two two-run home runs against the Cardinals in the 4-2 game in St. Louis when Carlton struck out 19 hitters, I believe, because I was a Cardinal fan. I have always been a Cardinal fan, up until more recently. I remember it very well and I watched it very closely.

Again, I guess the biggest thing was all the New York teams beat all the Baltimore teams that year. I remember that. I was a big Namath fan, so I remember it very well. But I remember the card guy. The card guy was very influential that year.

Q: How central to everything has Bartlett been, and was he -- did you target him and how did he get your attention?

JOE MADDON: Well, that's all Andrew. That's all Andrew, because I only saw Bartlett, I think, once or twice with the Angels and once last year he beat us on a ground ball to shortstop that he beat out. Andrew is the one that had his eyes locked on him for a while, and he started discussing him with me. He sent me some video to look, some different defense and offensive things, and then of course Matt. But when Andrew would speak to me about him, he was so emphatic how much he felt that he was the right guy for us, and I couldn't give him a real strong opinion because I had not seen him enough except for video, and my advice to Andrew was to trust your instinct, because I think Andrew has got great instincts in regard to his evaluation skills.

So he did; he did, and we gave up some very good players. But I thought based on Andrew's description in regard to what J.B. can do to our defense, which obviously he has, and of course what Matt has done, too, and even this kid Eddie Morlan that's in the minor leagues is supposed to be very good, too. That was all Andrew.

He does his research and he talked about the improved range factor we were going to have. He was absolutely right about that, and the power-pitching ability of Matt. It was a great trade for both sides as it turned out, but without J.B. in the middle, I really don't believe we would be playing this game tonight.

Q: The two September wins at Fenway, how much were those confidence-builders for your club?

JOE MADDON: Well, they're wonderful. We've gone up there all year. We've played some really close games and lost. We got swept twice and had to move on from there. Not easy. Not easy stuff. To do it in September was really good, obviously because it's later in the year, very short lead that we had over them at that particular juncture, and everybody is waiting for us to not be able to do those things.

Again, our guys answered the call and played really well, really well. Pitched well, caught it, and then of course some big hits. So confidence-wise, it does matter. To have been able to have done that this year toward the end of the year and going up there now is going to present a different look to us. Had we not been able to do that, it would have been different.

But then again, we're talking about a different time of the year, too. It's a different month and I understand that. When you're growing as an organization, and as a team, you have to be able to teach yourself a lesson at some point, and I thought we did. And that's going to be, I think, important when this series advances to Boston.

Q: You talked about Longoria and his sense of just knowing that he belongs here from the beginning.

JOE MADDON: Right.

Q: You have a couple of key guys here, talking about Balfour and Howell, who probably had some serious doubts before this year about whether they belonged here. Can you talk about how they've evolved in that way?

JOE MADDON: I'll go with JP first. I think JP always in the back of his mind always believed that he belonged here. He just needed the right opportunity. JP, he is a unique young man. Augie Garrido was his manager at the University of Texas, and I know Augie well. I believe I had heard after JP had left that Augie had said he had the best makeup of any pitcher that he ever had at University of Texas.

I know that he's not going to say that easily, so I was really eager to see this guy, and then here he comes talking in, skinny little guy with a strut. He ended up being a starting pitcher for us, and of course, his stuff was short, and it didn't all fit.

Came into spring training this year, and once we put him in the bullpen and he saw the lineup one time through, all of the sudden, he became a different guy and the confidence began to sore and he felt like he could do this.

He came with a lot of the stuff, this equipment, but I think putting him in the bullpen this year and putting him in some of the right slots did a lot, but his velocity is up. You're going to see 87, 89 on that gun now where before it was 84 to 86 as a starter and you still see the good changeup and you see the really good breaking ball that's good to righties and lefties. I think his confidence was built by hitting him in the bullpen.

Grant has always had a wonderful arm, and with him, it's about opportunity; and with him, furthermore, the world revolves around confidence. He just wasn't confident enough in his own ability. And again, he comes back to the sense of belonging. He did so well in Triple-A, and he was just unable to bring that. Even though he was throwing the same kind of pitches, he was walking too many people.

But once he got his feet on the ground here and we started putting him into more situations and he was successful, he also felt like, I belonged here. It's not more complicated than that. They're both very talented, but they needed opportunity and they needed some success to get that sense or feeling about themselves, and that's where they're at right now. Wonderful young men, absolutely wonderful.

Q: We also saw Longoria this year, he just turned 23. Could you speak to how big he could get in this town and how well he can navigate all that, and does he enjoy being a guy like that?

JOE MADDON: I think so. That's part of what he came equipped with. He's special, he's different. I don't know exactly where he's gotten it from the beginning. I don't know, I guess his baseball pedigree didn't start out that well when he was younger but all of a sudden at Long Beach, the date he blossoms, the guy handles all of this really well for me, and on top of that he's one of the more skillful young players I've been around, period.

He is very good now, but he has room to get a lot better, and he knows that himself. I think he has a great combination of skill and personality and charisma to really put this all together. I think with him we are just seeing the tip of the iceberg right now, and I think as a manager I'm really excited about being able to work with him in years to come, because you project him out over a period of time, he could become something very, very special.

Q: How would you say that Scott Kazmir has matured and developed over the last several years?

JOE MADDON: Kaz, again, here's another guy as a pitcher with one of the better arms in either league.
I think maturation-wise, what you're seeing right now is the fact that he's been around for a couple years and he's been struggling with his command but he's still been able to work through those moments and be very good for us this year. It's easy to look good when everything is going well. It's difficult to look good when things aren't going entirely your way, and I think part of Kaz, the maturation part of it, and I've said it often times, I don't think he gets enough credit for being as tough as he is. I think that's going to bear itself out over time. People are going to become more familiar with that. But he is.

Physically, like I said, he's very gifted. Maturation, again, just like talking about Longo, he's still got some ways to go, a lot of our guys do. But I've seen him make a lot of progress this year, and I think this event right now that we're involved in kind of validates everything that we've been talking about as a staff for the last couple years in regard to trying the drive the point home, in regard to fundamentals and handling the day properly, so when you get to this point, you present yourselves as we have to right now; that they are prepared for it. I think we are, but I think our guys are getting better, and he's right in the mix of that whole thing.

Q: Staying on the Kazmir topic, his last start during the Division Series, the White Sox had him on the ropes. I think it was 37 pitches in the first inning. Was that a big step for him along those lines of why you discussed, being able to get out of that and then basically cruise relatively unblemished from there?

JOE MADDON: Exactly. A lot of guys when they're faced with that moment tend to go the other way; then they're out of the game and they don't give you five or six innings. He's battled through some tough moments just based on command, and he knows it, and it's not a big secret. He's working on it constantly, and it's going to get better.

Again, it's not overtly wrong. It's about tempo and it's within his delivery and just what he's seeing at the plate. A lot of abstract or intangible kind of things. I believe this: Those things come together like of a finger sometimes, so with him, even though he hasn't been at the top of his game necessarily, if you look at his numbers, they're pretty darned good. So just imagine when he pieces all this stuff back together, which he will, how this man could really take off.
Again, I've seen a lot of improvement, and like with a lot of our young guys, it's just the beginning, and I keep talking about this whole event just being the beginning. This is something we have to grow from as a group, and I think our guys are handling it in absolutely the proper way.

Scott Kazmir

Q: I just wanted to ask you a little bit about your experience pitching against this team, the Red Sox. It seems like time and again when you've faced them, you've had more success than not against them. Why do you think that is?

SCOTT KAZMIR: I don't know. This is the team that always has a lot of depth, is always a quality baseball team. They've changed up over actually a half of a season.

You know, they've got kind of a different look, different team. But they still have quality players out there that get the job done. I don't know, just been lucky enough to have had some successful outings against them, but you can't really take those guys lightly because they're a team that's been in this situation before and they know how to win big ballgames.

Q: When you signed your long-term deal earlier this year, you said you wanted to be here when the winning finally started. Did you think it was going to happen this quickly that you guys would find yourself here at this time of the year?

SCOTT KAZMIR: I didn't think we were going to be as good as we were, came out to be this year right now. But I thought we were going to be a lot better than what we have been in the past.
So I knew that we were looking forward and the future was very bright for us. I thought that -- I felt like that in spring training. It felt like the right move to continue playing here, and I just enjoyed being with all these guys that kind of you grew up with and came up through the ranks together with.

Q: You came up out of Houston, I think, right after -- a few years after Beckett and you've had some pretty good match-ups against him over the years. How much has Beckett been a part of your career, and what's it like to kind of face him on this kind of stage?

SCOTT KAZMIR: Well, I've watched him since high school. We've kind of been rifle high school teams. You just pick up a lot of things from a guy like that, just how competitive he is and how he goes about his business and whatnot. I get a chance to talk to him whenever I can and kind of pick apart his brain and see what I can kind of put into my game.

There's quite a few things that you can take out of someone like that, you know, that's been there, done everything, and really knows how to go about his business.

Q: Going back again to your match-up tomorrow, he's never lost in the post-season, Beckett. Does that bring any added pressure? I know your focus is on their hitters, but does going against a guy who's never lost bring any extra pressure?

SCOTT KAZMIR: No, I don't think it puts any pressure on any of us on the team. We've pretty much had all the pressure on us from the very get-go, on people really not believing and not really thinking that we're going to carry this thing through.

I don't think there's going to be any pressure from here on out. It feels like we're kind of underdogs and wasn't even expected to make it this far, so we're just having fun.

Q: What's the toughest thing for you about facing this Red Sox lineup?

SCOTT KAZMIR: The toughest thing for me would probably just be the team and how they go about playing nine innings, how they go about just getting the job done and winning.

You know, you'd face other teams that they'd look for the long ball, they'd look for just one or two guys to really step up and get the job done, but it's not like that with this team. It feels like everyone has their role, has a part, and they don't really get out of that at all. They stick to the game plan. I mean, that makes it tough because everyone takes the same approach and everyone knows what it takes to win.

I mean, it's just tough. You have to be on your A Game the entire time, the entire game.

Q: Is it more difficult to keep -- do you think to pitch against Boston, or would it be more important to keep the hitter guys off from the beginning and making pitches against Youkilis and Ortiz and Bay and so forth?

SCOTT KAZMIR: The main thing for me is keep the first guy off every inning, off the base path. I think getting that first out is always big for any team, but especially this team, because if you make one little mistake, you walk one here, you walk one there, those guys are going to find a way to get around the bases and score; so it's all about getting that first guy out.

Q: I know you won't face him, but can you talk any parallels or any similarities between you and Daisuke and the way that you approach pitching?

SCOTT KAZMIR: I can't really answer that. I don't know how he prepares himself. I know I don't throw as much before I start as he does. That's about all I know. I know he throws a lot more different pitches than I do, so I would say that we're kind of opposites in a way.

Q: When you were traded here, were you jolted, were you excited about the new opportunity? What was it like for you?

SCOTT KAZMIR: I kind of had mixed emotions. I didn't know what to expect. I was my first time getting traded. I didn't think anything like that was going to happen that soon in my career, so it was just a shock from the very beginning.

But when I got a chance to talk to a lot of the staff members with the Devil Rays at the time, I knew it was exciting because I had an opportunity to really show -- to get the experience at that early of an age and being able to get this opportunity, it's been a blessing.

Q: When you did sign the long-term contract, how tough was that -- how tough of a decision was that for you when you thought the winning was coming, but the history wasn't there?

SCOTT KAZMIR: It was tough. It was a tough decision, but going through spring training and the beginning of the season, just seeing all the guys, seeing how everything was coming into place and who we had coming from the minor leagues to help us out, I really felt confident and comfortable about what we had. By that time of me actually getting back on the field and negotiating the contract, it was actually pretty easy for me.

Q: Following up the question about the trade, when you go from a big market team like the Mets and come down here and experiencing the losing that you guys did, does that make it any more satisfying to be here now given what you've gone through and when you came from since that trade?

SCOTT KAZMIR: Sure. I think it's really made me a better baseball player all around, going through the tough spots early in my career and overcoming those. It's really, I think, matured me and really just kind of made me an all-around better baseball player. It feels like everything is worth it now being here right now.

Q: Do you think you were too amped up in that start against the White Sox, and will that experience help you tomorrow?

SCOTT KAZMIR: See, I don't think I was too amped up. I just think that I just didn't find the groove early. I didn't really feel comfortable from the get-go, and it kind of took a little bit more pitches than I wanted it to, to really find that comfort zone. Hopefully that's not going to be the case in this next start, and I'll be able to just get right on the track from the very first pitch.

Q: You talked about watching Beckett. I was more concerned about did you watch footage of somebody like Spawn or Carlton, very successful left-handed pitchers, probably the two best from a winning standpoint, the most wins by left-handed pitchers?

SCOTT KAZMIR: Well, I try to -- I look at some guys in that way, try to find similarities. I guess one guy that I could really pinpoint that really helped me out that actually, you know, played earlier was Ron Guidry, kind of a smaller-framed guy that threw a little bit harder from the left side. I kind of looked at a little bit of video here and there and just kind of found out something that he did or tendencies that he did that really made him successful, and it's helped me out a little bit.