Mariners 3, Blue Jays 1
Q. Bryce, you'd never started a game on short rest. Springer, which I'm sure you've seen before, hits the homer on the first pitch of the game. What was going through your mind as that first inning was starting to unfold?
BRYCE MILLER: First off, we've always talked about, like, sometimes maybe you should just skip your bullpen and pitch on four days, and that's what we did this week.
Going into it, I felt good. Fortunately, I threw 55 pitches, I think, in Detroit, so I still felt fresh.
Coming off of a 15-inning game in Seattle two nights ago, I wanted to get deep and give our bullpen a chance. I was able to do that.
Then yeah, first pitch, home run, definitely not ideal, especially on the road. We also joke pretty often that first pitch home run doesn't count. So we're going with that; it didn't count. (Laughter.)
No, after that, we had a long at-bat, 12-pitch at-bat, ended up in a walk, and made a lot of pitches that at-bat.
Yeah, the first inning went pretty long, but I felt like I made some good pitches that inning and had some stuff to build off of moving forward and was able to settle down afterwards.
Q. Dan said that the plan in a best case was to get you through four innings. How much of that was communicated to you before the game, and how much did you appreciate the opportunity to pitch even deeper than that?
BRYCE MILLER: Yeah, they didn't tell me anything, any plan, so I was going out there just letting it rip until they came out and got me.
Yeah, after I came in and looked and had 27 pitches in the first, I was like, we're going to have to figure it out here. Then yeah, after that, it was, like, six pitches, eight pitches, a lot of short innings. I felt like I was rolling after that.
Everything felt really good, really fresh. Was getting ahead, attacking, and it's a recipe for success.
Q. You've seen it up close with Cal all year, but he gets that home run. What does it do for you and, obviously, the rest of the dugout there?
BRYCE MILLER: Yeah, he's hit a few of them this year, and it's oftentimes a spark for our offense and for our team.
At this point, anytime he's at the plate, you think there's a chance that he might send one. That's really with the whole lineup. We have a lot of confidence in 1 through 9 every day no matter who it is.
After I gave up the lead-off home run, the plan was to continue to attack and keep them there. That's all they get. I knew we'd come around and put some runs on the board.
Q. Given everything you've been through this year, not feeling great, dealing with the elbow, all this stuff, how gratifying is this performance? Your fastball had a higher average than any of your starts this year. How gratifying is all this?
BRYCE MILLER: Yeah, it feels great. The year personally didn't go how I had planned and how I had hoped for, but we're in the ALCS, and I got to go out there and set the tone, and I felt great. So arm, body, mentally, everything feels really good right now, so I couldn't ask for anything more.
Q. We saw you a couple hours before the game kind of sitting by yourself against the center field fence. What is that process? What were you doing there? Is it a visionization or what goes into that prep before the game?
BRYCE MILLER: Yeah, I like to -- I've never pitched here. I've been here a few times and I never threw here, so going into it, I knew this was the biggest start of my career so far, and I just wanted to get out there and mentally kind of get in a zone and visualize having success on the mound.
That's something that Bern, our mental skills guy, walks us through just visualizing certain pitches with runners on, in the stretch, and seeing yourself kind of from a third-person view of having success, and that way whenever you're in the moment, it feels like you've already been there. So I try to do that, and yeah, just kind of settle down.
There's been a lot of excitement and I guess nerves coming into today and coming off of the long game in Seattle two nights ago. Yeah, just kind of take a moment for myself.
Q. Cal came out in the first inning and it was a pretty lengthy conversation? What did he say? Was it a one-sided conversation or a discussion back and forth?
BRYCE MILLER: I don't know. I don't even remember that conversation. That was after first and second?
Q. Yeah, first and second.
BRYCE MILLER: I don't know. That was a hectic inning. He usually doesn't have much to say. It's more of he comes out -- sometimes he thinks he has jokes, and I give him a courtesy laugh, a little chuckle, and settle back down and keep going.
No, he's always really good with timing, you know, when to come out and when he knows that we need to slow down and get us back in the zone. I don't remember the convo at all, but I'm sure that's how it went.
Q. It also looked like you went kitchen sink after the first inning. You tried everything, I think seven different pitches. Was that part of the plan to try to get you back in it?
BRYCE MILLER: I mean, the last few weeks it's kind of been something I've been focusing on, is just as the year has gone on, and on and off the IL, I kind of got away from throwing off-speed and zone and attacking with those pitches, and it makes things a whole lot easier whenever I'm not just fastball splitter.
The last few weeks, we've been trying to get back to that, and whenever I can do that, it makes things a lot easier.
Yeah, so it's not necessarily just today, but it's been a work in progress.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports