Oct. 5 Dustin Pedroia postgame interview

Q. Can you talk about what you guys were trying to do with Price. Was it anything different than what you had done with him during the regular season?

DUSTIN PEDROIA: I mean, basically his stuff is so good and he attacks the zone so much, we kind of went away from our normal approach to try to work the count, get the starting pitcher out of the game. We had to hit. That was basically had.

Ells was on base all night. Vic had a huge hit. I know from my at bats, Ells changed the game. The double I hit, I got in a 2 0 count because he was throwing balls away in case Ells was going to run to try to throw him out. And I got a 2-0 pitch to hit, hit it and drove him in. Early in the game he's on third, less than two outs and then David has the big home run. We had to swing the bat against them. And guys grinded out at bats; it was nice.

Q. Was there anything different about Price than there's been in the past? Was he in the middle any more than he's been against you guys?

DUSTIN PEDROIA: Not really. His stuff is tough. There's a reason why he won the Cy Young and his numbers are what they are. He's got great stuff and he competes. So we knew it was going to be tough. We knew we had to have "A+" game to beat him, and we had that tonight.

Q. What was your response when Koji comes into a game now?

DUSTIN PEDROIA: As a defender, I mean, it's just kind of tough to say, it's a relaxing inning. He always throws strikes. Whatever signal is thrown down, he throws it there. He's always locating pitches. It's awesome. We have confidence that he's got swing and miss stuff every pitch he throws and we're going to win the game.

Q. Talk a little bit about the role the double plays played in the game tonight.

DUSTIN PEDROIA: Yeah, I mean, obviously at this ballpark if you get a chance to turn two, you better turn it. And both times I was just trying to get the ball to Stephen and let him turn it. He turns a great double play. Our pitchers made pitches. Taz executed his pitches down and away. Brez made a good pitch. We have to turn those. So we take pride in our defense and tonight it worked out for us.

Q. When Joe Maddon was here, he said he was looking forward to coming back for Game 5. What's your reaction to that and how difficult do you think it will be to close this series out?

DUSTIN PEDROIA: That's what Joe should say. He's a great manager. He has those guys believing. They've already played a couple of elimination games and they've won. I'm not going to say anything bad about Joe. I respect the heck out of him and so does our whole team. It's going to be tough to put them away. They've been through that before this year. We know that. So we're looking forward to playing Game 3.