Postseason Press Conference: A.J. Hinch on Tigers Preparations for the ALDS | 10/3/25

Postseason Press Conference: A.J. Hinch on Tigers Preparations for the ALDS | 10/3/25

Do you have a game one starter or some form of a pitching plan? Yeah, we do. So, game one will be Troy Melton. Game two will be TK Scubble and then we will um you know, we’ll have a plan after the off day. So, um I let Troy know on the plane last night that he was uh was going to start and we’re excited to hand him the ball. uh plus stuff. Uh great demeanor, the ability to handle um what’s probably going to be the most excitable outing for him in a uh couple months worth of of major league outings. So, we’re we’re excited to get him a normal prep, normal routine, uh normal warm-up. you know, it’s it’s going to be somewhat abbreviated just given, you know, how we’ve used him over the last couple of months, but um but we have a plan after him as well. We’ll go to Evan in the front. Yeah. To add on to that, um how much do you expect him to go? Obviously, you got him up out of the pen in Cleveland. What do you like about him in this spot? And then what are some of the other options maybe to get to the path to win? Yeah. So, we we have um we try not to to to script out too much cuz I I don’t know how the game’s going to go, but I you know, I’ve watched him um be an incredible strikethrower um when he’s right and use all of his pitches and um exceed my expectations that I would set on the on the front end. Uh, I’ve also seen him, um, you know, have a shorter stint if we want to, you know, flip the lineup or or bring in a lefty or bring in a different righty, bring in spin or do something different. So, I’m going to read the game and and I I I have an idea where his limitations are, but I I hate to even put that on him going into this start because of the the outing like he had where it was 50 pitches, five innings. I’m just going to keep rolling with him. Um, you know, other times he’s been, you know, in some duress and had to work a little bit harder and I’ve gotten him out of the game. So, um, not a traditional start, but not necessarily a limited one either. We’ll stay in front with Jason. How much did his non-traditional start in Cleveland make an impression on you? Yeah, that was a big start. I mean, number one, we we see this guy as a starting pitcher. So, I I don’t want the the back of the baseball card and his major league experience to to take anything away from what we see. This is a guy with multiple plus pitches, high-end vo um he can throw strikes in in all quadrants of the of the strike zone. He can attack lefties, he can attack righties. Um and and he’s he is a starter. So we’ve we’ve limited his innings and and limited a little bit of his exposure just out of the the length of the season and and and what we’ve needed um to get to this point. But um he has all the starter attributes that that you would expect. And had we gone a different path um in the back half of the season or if he was at a different point of his career, maybe he would have just continued to be in the rotation. So, um I love that that that he’s adaptable and I think that he can um handle the moment of of uh of excitement telling his family that he’s starting a playoff game getting um to what’s going to be a rowdy environment in a in a in a big series. Also going to ask Cody front. Saw Bailey Horn and also Matt Verling here. um what’s kind of their status and what other roster decisions are you guys weighing right now? Yeah, so we have uh part of our our taxi squad or extra players um from the previous series is here with us. We have a group that’s working out in Toledo that did not make the trip, but Bailey, Colt, um Verling, um those guys all came to give us the the you know the most time to make the decision on how the roster is going to shape up. So, uh, we’re still likely to carry 12 pitchers, um, and 14 position players. Um, obviously, it’s a longer series, so you take a little bit of a deeper dive into into what can happen over a fiveame series as opposed to the previous threeame series. But those guys that are here are, you know, ramping up rehab for Colton and and Matt. Um, they’re in a separate column. Baileyy’s here. Uh, in the event we want to carry three lefties, uh, we needed to have them here as opposed to across the country. How close is Colt? Yeah, we’re gonna find out today. I mean, at Colt and Verling are both going to there’s going to be a live BP session here um in a half hour where we’re going to get a few reps um to see where Colt’s at, to see where Verling’s at, to see um a couple of our pitchers off the mound that haven’t pitched in the last series and things like that. So, um, we don’t need to make a decision until 10:00 a.m. tomorrow and and we’re likely to take as much time as we, um, have allotted to us to to make the final decision. Unrelated, but what’s been the value of having Finnegan? Um, a guy with reverse splits and and a splitter. You’ve been able to use him kind of in a lot of different situations. Yeah. So, so Finnegan is um you know, it’s amazing when you acquire somebody at the deadline, you know, with a with a history. And so that history would suggest, you know, we were looking at the back end of the game and working back towards the middle. In reality, when we acquired him, we just liked him as a high-end quality pitcher um when it mattered the most. in in the regular season. That doesn’t always mean the fifth and sixth and seventh inning or even bridging multiple innings, but he has the ability to do that. He has endurance, he has plus stuff. Uh he can handle both sided hitters and he has like big moment experience. So the closing experience just gives you the the the confidence that he’s going to be able to to handle, you know, the pressure of the of the situation. So, in the previous series, we used him creatively just to get us to bridge the game and keep it where uh where it needed to be as if that was the closing situation. Um, we have the luxury to be able to get to the back of the game in a couple different ways. and him being able to go multiple innings, which he hasn’t been challenged a tough a ton doing in his career, u but can and then using his pitches the way that that he’s using him now sets up um the ability to get a ton of outs for us at at critical moments. Go to Jason. With Cleveland, you had to prepare for, you know, facing a bullpen with four lefties, four righties, you know, various matchups. How much does the different makeup of the likely Mariners bullpen affect the way you put together your roster? Yeah, so we also had the the I guess you’d say luxury of 10 games in 14 days or whatever it was playing Cleveland where there weren’t a lot of surprises. We haven’t seen this team since July. Um and prior to that, we saw them in in early April. It was our first win of the season, our first series win of the season. And um this is just not a team that we overlap with a ton. So familiarizing yourself with their with their pitchers, their strengths, how they get to to the to the middle part of the game, how they finish their games is pretty um it’s pretty obvious. They have super high-end starting pitching. They have a tremendous bullpen and um you’ve got to earn your runs against these guys. Now, they’re predominantly right-handed, but I say that and Spire is going to come in the game at some point with the with the game on the line and he can he can face anyone and he can get swing and miss out of anyone. So, um, not having the four or five lefties, I don’t think they’re going to have that like like the Boston or like, um, Cleveland had our our last couple of series, but, um, that may alter our bench. It might alter our, um, the lineup construction that I go with on am I going to stack the lefties, am I not? Um, you know, I’ve got 24 hours to figure it out. Go in the second row on the left, Tim. Go grab that. AJ, uh, Dan’s going to manage his first playoff game tomorrow. you’ve have a few under your belt now. Um, if you had if you could think back just like what were some of the things that you remember from that first turn through that you just didn’t know? How do you get me to give him advice? Yeah, exactly. Just just that you didn’t know until you actually went through it for the first time. Yeah. I mean, listen, I I think experience matters, but I also think um the the the best I think attribute that you can have as a manager in the playoffs is the is the knowledge and trust of your own team. Nobody knows your team the way that you do. No matter how many people try to tell you about your team or tell you about your decisions or or weigh in on what should have or could have happened, that the the manager’s chair supplies a an incredible opportunity to get to know your team and and make decisions accordingly. Now, um obviously the game’s fast-paced compared to a normal game in June or July. Playoff baseball has a sense of urgency that you can only get in October. And that comes with decision-m. it comes with seeing your players under this pressure for the for for sometimes the first time which is which is something Dan’s going through and um you know I’m I’m fortunate that on this team you know we have played a lot of playoff baseball um you know to to date you know we have we had the opportunity last year we’ve had the opportunity this year and so um everybody everybody has their own style or their own belief on what you know what playoff baseball means um for me I think it I see it as an opportunity more than um stress or pressure or or anxietyfilled days. It’s um it’s the best time to play baseball. Go in the middle and the back. Uh just kind of generally speaking, the final two months of the year is where you guys did have some challenges relative to the first half. Some guys in the clubhouse mentioned how that kind of hardened the group, maybe better prepared it for this time of year. um as you said, get really prepared for October baseball, but do you think in any way that did help this group to have it be more battle tested, for lack of a better phrasing? Um, we weren’t we weren’t not battle tested before. You know, I think I think if anything it challenged the the distractions that come with the peaks and valleys of a season, you know, I think the um you know, we were on a a quite a journey to start the season. I mean, we race out. We’re in this, we have this big lead. We get a lot of love and a lot of attention and a lot of power rankings and all the stuff that doesn’t mean anything at the point of the season until you get to the finish line. So, um, we’ve had to deal with a lot. Maybe that hardened us, maybe that toughened us up, maybe that challenged us to, uh, to play the full 162. Our local media will tell you they’re tired of hearing me say you got to play the schedule, but you do. And we needed 161 games to qualify for this playoff race. and and we you know maybe that was unexpected because of how much attention we got at the early part of the season, but um the message remains the same and and and the same with this series. Like you got to play well to beat these good teams. It only gets harder as the playoffs go because the teams advance. They earn the right to keep playing and the scoreboard gets smaller and smaller with the number of teams that that get to have their name up on that board. So, um, it’s awesome and I think you need that experience in order to to know what I’m talking about. I’m sure some things that I said in the spring maybe make more sense now, um, given the road we that we traveled, but, um, our team had a ton has a ton of confidence. We’ve always had a ton of confidence and we’re coming off of a big series win that that we hope to carry that momentum into into playing the Mariners. Come over here to Tyler. AJ, uh, Cal Raleigh was obviously a huge story this year and I wanted to ask you for your perspective as a former catcher, how much do the demands of catching, physical and mental, take from a guy’s offense and and in light of that position? What does that tell you about the gear he had? Yeah, so I I I I’m very biased about the catching position and I I know it’s an integral part of any winning team and specifically a playoff team. You got to have a good catcher who knows what he’s doing. Um, when when you have an offensive catcher, um, you know, I I I feel like so many times so many of us in in the game label a guy an offensive guy or a defensive guy, and Cal is is is just a catcher, man. He’s just he’s everything. And so, for him to be able to separate the physical demands um and the mental demands of that position, um, I have the utmost respect for because he’s not allowed to have a slump on both sides at the same time. You can struggle on one side or the other and and probably feel okay about yourself going home having contributed somewhere, but um I’m amazed at the at the ability to maintain two swings, an entire pitching staff, the weight of a of an entire organization after signing a big deal and and uh posting every single day, the foul balls, the balls in the dirt, the u the fatigue, the travel from Seattle. You know, I I don’t want to love on him too much because I want him to have a miserable series, but I I do I do want to offer a ton of praise to someone who um who who who has answered the challenge and the demands of the job at the highest level that I’ve ever seen in my in my years in baseball that it’s a remarkable season and and and he should be she he should get all the the praise. Go on the left to Ryan. AJ, Will Vest was a guy that the mayor selected in the rule five. I’m glad they gave him back. And and some of the guys over there talked about that was one of the worst decisions they made. It was a roster kind of thing. How have you seen him grow? He was very talented but very inexperienced when he was here. How have you seen him grow? Yeah, I you know I think when you look back at at decisions like that, I I think it was it’s really easy now cuz you wish that I’m sure the Mariners would love to have this version of Will Vest right now, but how many years ago was that? Four, three or four years ago? I mean, he’s grown a lot. He’s matured a lot. He’s been optioned to the minor leagues after being in the big leagues since then. So, um I don’t want to ease off on the Mariners too much, but that that we we are getting um the benefits of a of a guy who had to run that race or or or or walk that path. Um and he’s worked his tail off to to get there. So, um he’s grown because he’s he’s been challenged, you know, he’s been challenged to find a secondary pitch for for left-handed hitters. He’s been challenged and he’s found two of them. He’s got a good slider. He’s got a good change up. He’s been challenged in a variety of roles. Um, often times the non- glorious middle reliever where he’s coming in and and looks good but isn’t quite getting the love of a backend reliever. I think that’s an area of growth for him. Now he’s in the back end. Um, I stopped just short of calling him the closer yet I close him almost every game. Um, that comes with added responsibility and added attention when all of a sudden you do have an off day or you do have a bad pitch or you do get hit around. So, um, this version of Will Vest is is um a a a legit bonafide high-end um trustworthy reliever who you want to have the ball in your hand with your fate uh determined by his ability to execute. And um I know his time as a rule five pick and coming to Seattle as part of that. And um you know, the way the the the the rules work and the way that that we were able to get them back is a um it’s good for us because we we needed we’ve needed them and and we’ve used

Tigers Manager A.J. Hinch talks about the team’s preparations for the ALDS, including the pitching plan and roster.

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