Oct. 21 Kyle Lohse postgame interview

Q.  Just curious, Kyle, you're scouting this game obviously hoping that you're not going to have to pitch tomorrow.  How much sleep are you going to be able to get tonight without thinking about what you're going to do tomorrow?

KYLE LOHSE:  It's not going to be a problem.  I usually don't sleep before I start.  It's not going to change my routine.

I've known these guys, now we played them six games.  I've seen enough of them.  I know what I've got to do to be successful.  I know last time I didn't have my best stuff, and I was able to stay away from the big inning.  Little things like that.  I know what I need to do, it's a matter of going out and doing it.  I'm not going to lose any sleep, because I don't get any, so it won't matter.

Q.  The forecast for tomorrow is a lot of rain.  What kind of experience or success have you had pitching ‑‑

KYLE LOHSE:  We have kind of a joke in the clubhouse, seems like probably about 60 percent of my games have rain in the forecast.

It's not going to change anything.  My last start against these guys, rain was in the forecast.  Again, nothing really changes my approach or my mentality going into it.  If it rains and we get delayed, I've got more time to hang out in the clubhouse.  There's not a lot I can do about that.  I tend to focus on what I can control, which is my focus, my mentality and my approach.  So things like that, it's not going to bother me too much.

Q.  Can you talk about Marco Scutaro and having to face him and the professional hitter he is, such a tough at‑bat.  Seems to square everything up.

KYLE LOHSE:  He's really impressed us with his approach and the things he does up there.  I'm not going to give away too much what I'm going to try to do.  He's shown us that he's not afraid to get deep in a count, whether he's waiting for his pitch and his zone that he can do something with.  Or last game his ability to hit a couple of my pitches out of the zone for base hits.  He's just really ‑‑ I tip my hat to him.  He's done a great job here in this playoff situation, and done a good job getting on base and causing problems for us.

He's one of the guys that you've got to really pay attention to and try not to let him get something started with him on the bases.

Q.  Can you describe the mood in your clubhouse, being up 3‑1 and now in this do or die Game 7?

KYLE LOHSE:  You've seen us the last couple years it seems, unfortunately, we don't win until we absolutely need to.  So it's one of those things where obviously we would love to have taken care of business the last two games.  We haven't.

But we know ‑‑ we've played a bunch of elimination games the last few years.  We have pretty much the same crew of guys, and we know it's time to get it done.  We've got to go in there, wipe the slate clean.  We've got one game to play.  We have to win tomorrow if we want to keep playing.

I don't see our mood changing, we've got to get the job done tomorrow and turn the page, that's the only way you can do it.

Q.  Just curious, the great matchup here with Giants and you guys, both teams winning the last two titles.  But it seems like your experience is a little fresher because a lot of their players, the ones in 2010 are not here anymore.  How much does that play a role?  And also talk about defending your title, that's a big deal.

KYLE LOHSE:  Well, yeah, it is a big deal.  I don't know the history of it, but I don't know when the last time a team's gone back to the World Series after having won it.  It doesn't happen too often.

I don't think we look at that as pressure.  I don't think we care about that, to be honest with you.  We're focused on right now what can we do to get back there.  History doesn't play any part of it for us.

They obviously have got a good crew over there.  They've shown that they can play pretty well with their backs up against the wall, too.  I don't think we're too worried about anybody's past, because we've both shown we can be pretty resilient when our backs are up against the wall.

Q.  How tough is it to have two of your key players injured going into the final game?

KYLE LOHSE:  It's tough.  But it's something we've dealt with all year.  We've had guys playing out there less than a hundred percent, battling through injuries.  It was tough to find out today that Holliday couldn't go.  Hopefully he gets treated right and gets the right treatment and can come back tomorrow.  I haven't got an update on him, so I don't know exactly where he stands.

But you look all year we've played without Chris Carpenter, Lance Berkman was a guy that was supposed to be big for us and we've barely seen him.  We're used to dealing with adversity as far as health goes.  And we don't go around feeling sorry for ourselves, because no one else is going to feel sorry for us.  That doesn't really help.

I think mentally you saw when Beltran went out, Matt Carpenter hit that home run a couple of games ago.  I think that's the attitude we have in the clubhouse is somebody goes down, somebody has to pick that guy up.  And that's a pretty good thing to have in there.