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WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: 2ND ROUND POOL E

March 12, 2017

Jerry Weinstein

Tokyo, Japan

ISRAEL 4, Cuba 1

Q. That was a come-from-behind game in the second round. What's in your mind right now?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: I'm glad we won. Well, obviously we're happy to have won a game against one of the premiere teams in all of international baseball, and I think this is the first game we were behind. I think we've been ahead in every game thus far and we came back and won a game against an extremely good Cuban team.

Q. The first round, you were undefeated. Do you have any particular reason?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: The question is why are we undefeated. I'm not going to be a smart ass and say something stupid like, we scored more runs than everybody else. But that's a good reason why we're 4-0.

The fact of the matter is that we've pitched extremely well, we've had timely hitting and we've played great defense. This wasn't a great offensive game for us, even though we -- I thought we hit the ball pretty good. We hit a bunch of at-'em balls; a bunch of hard balls at people, and we played a really good team that pitched well and played extremely well.

Q. The safety squeeze play, that was not the long ball; it was small ball. Was it your sign or was that the player did it by himself?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: No, that was a designed play. For us, that's a perfect situation, runners on first and third, left-handed pitcher, left-handed hitter with pitcher falling off to the third base side, and that lane is open to bunt and Blake Gailen made a perfect bunt just according to plan. But that was a design play.

Q. During the game, you walked to the plate umpire. What kind of conversation did you have with the plate umpires during the game?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Well, I just -- we thought that was a balk; that the pitcher started to come set and stopped, and when you go to couple your hands, it's one continuous move once you stop, in our opinion. Of course he didn't agree with us. He said he was just shaking the pitch off and it was nothing. He's the boss, so we don't worry about that kind of stuff.

But I did have to go up and ask him, because from our vantage point, that was a balk. But from his interpretation, and balks are all interpretive. It's a judgment call. So his judgment was no balk, so that was the end of discussion.

Q. Now you have a 4-0 record and you wish to go undefeated; what's in your mind for the day after tomorrow, for the future?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: In reality, we're 0-0, because those four games, even though they are in the bank and they can't take them away from us, they don't mean anything. What is important is tomorrow's game, one pitch at a time, just like we've played every game.

We don't feel like -- we're not any better than we were relative to wins and losses. We just have a game in the bank and we have to play well again tomorrow to give us a chance to move on.

Q. You got Brad Goldberg back for this round. You decided, understandably, to leave Zeid in the ninth inning. What does that do to your bullpen to have those two guys now at the end?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Well, obviously we hope that shortens the game for us. When we have those two guys at the back end of our bullpen, basically it becomes a seven-inning ballgame, even though there will be some other guys that come in in matchup situations later in the game.

We're just trying to leverage situations, find the best matchup for us and we've got some left-handers. Today was a right-handed day because Cuba is right-handed dominant, and their big boppers are all right handed.

So we were -- there were a couple situations when we had a left-hander warming up or maybe just a left-on-left at-bat. But the plan going in was going to be primarily right-handed and it was all based on Marquis giving us some length, and he did that, and that was huge for us. Not only for today's game, but it rests our guys for tomorrow. The only guy that's not available is Marquis.

Q. You played against Cuba. What kind of impression do you have from Cuba? That was my first question. And I have another question. Team Israel, is your country representing -- actually, Team Israel seems like not the represented country of Israel, but Team Israel, some of the people think that this team is like the second team of the United States, the second team of Team USA. How do you feel about that?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Our guys would not be the second team in the United States. Those guys are still in spring training. They are in the big leagues. Most of our guys are minor leaguers.

But the attitude in our clubhouse is we are representing Israel. We are not the JV team for team USA. We are Team Israel, and make no mistake about that.

The first part of your question, relative to what I thought about Cuba; I've been coaching against the Cubans since 1987. And ironically enough, Mesa's dad was the center fielder on that team, Victor Mesa. And that's when Omar Linares and Orestes Kindelan were on that team, as well. So I have a lot of respect.

I've coached in probably 30 games against the Cubans, and I have the utmost respect for Cuban baseball, the coaches, the players. They play hard, they play smart, they are great technicians and they have a great passion for the game, and we feel very fortunate to have won against Cuba and it was an outstanding game I thought against an outstanding team. So we have lots of respect for Cuba and baseball in Cuba.

Q. In the fifth inning, you sent a pinch-hitter for Davis, one of the utmost powerful hitters. Davis got a great history, but you sent a pinch-hitter and that was a quick decision. Does that mean that you have enough bench depth? That's win of the reasons why I feel your team is undefeated.
JERRY WEINSTEIN: We have enough bench depth. We don't make too many changes. But that left/right change in that situation we felt with a Cuban bullpen that was up until the closer and setup guy, was going to be dominated by left-handed pitching, and we felt the matchup, Cody Decker, right on left, was better than Ike Davis, left on left.

And you know, one of the nice things about this team is there are no egos, and when I take Ike Davis out, who is one of our most productive hitters and hits in the 3-spot, and I put Cody Decker in there, he's rooting for Cody Decker. There's no bad feelings. We just have one goal and that's to win. We trust one another, knowing that -- we're not going to be perfect, you know, obviously Cody Decker didn't hit a home run or double or triple. But the fact of the matter is, we're just trying to get the best matchup as we can and we like that right/left, left/right match up.

Q. I wanted to ask you about the decision how you used Jason Marquis today, compared to the first round, where you were very aware of the pitch count so you could bring him back if you needed to, but this time you let him go and you let him pitch into the sixth. Was that a flow-of-the-game decision or was that something you knew going in; that you were probably just going to let him go?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Well, it's both. Leaving Jason Marquis, and something we've not done, we've staffed it and kept our starting pitchers under 49 pitches with the exception of Corey Baker.

Last night when we talked about it, we felt like the game would dictate when we had to take him out, and if he had to stay a little longer; we felt like winning this game was extremely important, and if Jason was rolling, we would just roll with him and hopefully get another chance to use him in the next tournament.

We knew we could take him up to 65, and basically that's what we did. He had a lot left in the tank but we liked the matchup better after he hit Despaigne to bring Thornton in, and Thornton proved us right and did a great job. That's what we did.

But we had -- and before every game, we don't react. We play this game before the game is played. We sit down with the coaches and we do all the what ifs and all the possibilities. And if he gets knocked down in the first, how are we going to handle this.

You know, I'm not real good without a plan, and I think that we may have a good plan or a bad plan but we have a plan every time we go in. We don't just wing it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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