Oct. 4 Craig Kimbrel postgame interview
Q. Before the two‑run homer was there any indication that this might be a night where you get a four‑out save?
CRAIG KIMBREL: Yeah, there definitely was, called down for me to prepare and to stretch, start throwing when Carp went out, and it just so happened that happened, and I came in.
Q. You did this before a couple weeks ago. How much different was it here in the postseason?
CRAIG KIMBREL: It was a big difference. It's a regular season day game, and it's a postseason night game here, packed house. But it's still baseball. My job is to go out there and get as many outs as I'm supposed to get to finish the game, and I was able to do it tonight.
Q. Just with the emotions, though, how much different were the emotions?
CRAIG KIMBREL: Oh, it's obviously big. It's one of those things you always try to tell yourself to calm down. It's a little bit easier said than done. I was able to make it through it tonight.
Q. Did the situation in the crowd give you a few more miles an hour on the fastball tonight?
CRAIG KIMBREL: I guess it did. The scoreboard said so. But no, I was just trying not to throw it where I could get hurt. I left some balls up where I didn't want to do that. I got ahead of Ellis and Ethier, and I felt like I was in pretty good position, but I think I tried to do too much and lost something off of them. It was just one of those things. That might have got me a little bit. But Gerald throwing Dee out, that made the inning completely different.
Q. Momentum is such a big thing in sports. Can you talk about just what this means at this moment right now, the home crowd behind you ready to head out west, a bit of redemption possibly for the team?
CRAIG KIMBREL: Yeah, it's huge. Nobody wanted to go out to LA down two games. Tonight was huge in our minds. We knew we were going to have a tough game ahead of us, our guys showed up, played hard, and we got some big hits tonight. That's what it came down to. We're going out to LA, and hopefully we can keep that momentum going.