AL DIVISION SERIES: TWINS VS ASTROS

October 10, 2023

Dusty Baker

Target Field

Houston Astros

Pregame 3 Press Conference

Q. Dusty, have you guys settled on a Game 4 starter?

DUSTY BAKER: No, not yet. Some of it depends on the outcome of today's game and who we use today.

Q. Are both Urquidy and France available out of the bullpen today?

DUSTY BAKER: Yes.

Hopefully not.

Q. With Dubon there in center today, what went into the decision to put him out there today?

DUSTY BAKER: He hadn't played in a few days. McCormick played 11 games in a row, and he's struggling some, and I thought that Dubon was better potentially against Sonny Gray.

Q. We've seen Kyle Tucker already eliminate a run at home in this series and Max Kepler plays a good defensive right field for the Twins. What similarities do you see between those two players?

DUSTY BAKER: They're both tall, pretty good looking, and left-handed. And can hit. They're both young. I don't know how young. I think Kepler might be a little older than Kyle, but both very good players, and you need a good right fielder to stop the base runners from going first to third or else you'll be in trouble the whole game. Then both are pretty good at doing that.

Q. When you've got a guy like Javy on the mound, maybe similar to a Framber situation, you speak so confidently of those guys even though the regular season was a bit inconsistent. Does that confidence come, or is that kind of the belief you're talking about when you pick out the positives when you're finding confidence in guys who may have struggled?

DUSTY BAKER: It's easy to have confidence when you've seen them at their best, and they're both very young in their careers, and they both haven't struggled very much in their career. Now, they struggled some lately this year, but is part of that the league's adjusting to them? Is part of that the amount of innings that they've pitched since they've been in this league?

From their very first years, they were -- when I first got here, they were in the playoffs, and they've been in the playoffs ever since. They've played an extra month in four years, which is close to an extra year over anybody else in baseball.

So, yeah, I've got confidence in them, and they have that quiet confidence in themselves.

Q. Circling back on Dubon obviously in the lineup, can you just sum up what he has meant for this team? Coming out of Spring Training, obviously had to fill in for Jose, and what he's contributed for you as much as you've had him in the lineup all year?

DUSTY BAKER: Dubon's been --

Q. Filling in for Altuve.

DUSTY BAKER: He filled in for Altuve from the very beginning. At that time, we were trying to decide between he and Hensley who was going to take the spot, but Dubon won the spot. Dubon, once Altuve came back, I still have quite a few connections with the Giants, and they told me that he was probably one of their best center fielders over there too. His best position might be center field.

So I used a combination of what I've seen and also what I heard, and the fact that he's playing and playing very, very, very consistently. He's been a joy to have on the team. He's ready all the time. He's similar to Castro on the Twins because very rarely do you find a utility player that can play center field and play the infield effectively at the same time. Most of the time, they just play the infield.

He's been -- and plus I haven't played him so much where he really wore down. I tried to really watch the amount of playing time he gets. Sometimes him and the guys that haven't played that much because they've surpassed their lifetime ABs in games.