We’re just an hour or so away from the start of the American League Championship Series between the defending New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers. C.C. Sabatthia and C.J. Wilson are your Game 1 starters.
On Thursday, Yankees’ right fielder Nick Swisher hit the airwaves in New York to talk about the series with the Rangers, how their confidence is sky-high after dismantling the Twins, how he’s relieved to have performed better individually last round than he did during the early stages of last year’s playoffs, and how the Yankess are not too concerned about how they struggled with the Rangers during the regular season. Here’s a few quotes from the interview (via: SRI)
On how much confidence they have after beating the Twins the way they did:
“I will tell you what, we took a lot of pride in that. There were a lot of things that happened to us down the stretch in September that obviously we didn’t have control over. There were a lot of injuries that we were battling through. It just didn’t seem like luck was on our side, but on the reverse side some people say that you create your own luck. For us, going into the postseason, we knew what was at stake and to go into Minnesota the way we did and win those first two games that tells ya that this team definitely has talent.”
On how nice it was to play well in the first series after struggling last year:
“It meant the world to me. Let’s not get it wrong, I love winning man but I like to be a part of the action as well. I feel that I expect a lot from myself and last offseason wasn’t at all what my dream sounded like one bit, but I learned from that. For me, obviously my way wasn’t working so I told K-Long that we need to go to work and we need to go to work now. I give a lot of credit to him because he gave me the time, he gave me the knowledge, and I took that and busted my tail. Still trying to learn every day now.”
On whether he is worried about the way the Yankees struggled against the Rangers at the end of the regular season:
“I think it’s hard to match up right there. I think coming down the stretch when we went to Texas, we didn’t really have anybody because I was banged up, Tex was banged up, we had a lot of guys who were injured at the time and not to make that an excuse but this is a different team right now. We’re ready for the challenge, we’re excited. Obviously Texas is too and it’s well deserving but let’s line this thing up and see what happens.”