Opening Day blown save roughest of closer’s career
Q: How does it feel to get those first couple of saves for your new team? A: It helps. That rhythm, that flow that you are used to having in the middle of the season going through so many games, that routine that you have. You kind of just want to get that out of the way. Q: Did the blown save (against the Diamondbacks on Opening Day) linger longer than other blown saves because it was the opener or was it just, move on? A: That was the hardest blown save I’ve ever gone through, just because it was Opening Day. I really wanted to pick up Derek Law, new team, the way the guys lost last year — it was a rough one. And then we had the day off, so you can’t bounce back and get out there, so you have to sit with it through your day off. To me, that was one of the roughest 48 hours I’ve had to go through personally. Q: What do you attribute that to? Too amped up or it just happens? A: You know, I really don’t look too deep into it. I don’t think it was much more than I missed a couple locations. I wanted to execute those, but I didn’t. There’s really not a whole lot more than that. I could look back and say I should have thrown that pitch there or that pitch should have gone there, but at the end of the day when you miss your location, that’s the most important thing. Q: How much of a video guy are you? Do you spend a lot of time looking at yourself or batters? How do you go about that during the season? A: I think a lot of guys don’t want to overanalyze things, but I’m the kind of guy that likes to be over-prepared. I don’t ever want to be under-prepared. I am a video guy, but I’m watching video on the opposing hitters. I’m not watching my mechanics or what I did. Now I will watch my video after every outing, but it’s simply to look at location to see if I hit my spots. I’ll watch to see if there is some kind of tell that they told me that I could only catch on video because I couldn’t catch it in my peripheral vision while I was out there.
Q: Buster Posey is out for a while. How has that gone over in the clubhouse and how do you guys, as pitchers, deal with that?
A: For me, it doesn’t change all that much because Nick Hundley was my college catcher, so we go way back. Hundley has been fantastic as far as coming down in the bullpen and catching the bullpen guys in the middle of the game. He stays fresh throughout the game. Buster is fine, he’s great. And especially with his position, it’s important to make sure everything is OK. Something like that can be a career-ender, so it’s good to make sure everything is fine.