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WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: 2ND ROUND POOL E

March 13, 2017

Jerry Weinstein

Tokyo, Japan

NETHERLANDS 12, Israel 2

Q. Today's game was something you don't deserve, and in the games, you got a lot of runs unloaded?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: I don't know about deserving that, but we didn't pitch very well, so we didn't deserve a better fate necessarily. We were behind too many counts and had too many noncompetitive pitches with hitters ahead in the count.

I think we probably got pretty much what we deserved there. It wasn't for lack of effort or anything. Just bad execution tonight and also they punished us tonight. Let's give them some credit. They did an outstanding job with the bat.

Q. Your first round, you played against Netherlands and beat the Netherlands, and today you got the loss against Team Netherlands. How do you feel about it?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Well, it's baseball. You know, it's not -- good teams lose every night and bad teams win and vice versa. Jair did a good job, outstanding, pounded the strike zone and located the ball and he pitched up, and obviously it was not a competitive night for us.

But again, they pitched well, they caught the ball well and they certainly did an outstanding job with the bat.

Q. You have a day off tomorrow and you have another game to play against Team Japan. You may have watched last night's game, Japan played against the opponent. What is your impression for Team Japan?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Very impressed. Competitive team in every aspect. We've got to work it out for ourselves. You know, it's baseball, and a day off makes a big difference. We'll wash this one off and we'll get ready to play Japan on the next day.

Q. What's the key, and if you have a specific approach to play against Japan, if you can mention, please.
JERRY WEINSTEIN: We need to pitch better. We need to locate better. We need to do a better job of throwing strikes, quality strikes, and that would be a No. 1. That's really critical for us. We just weren't that sharp tonight, and we paid for it.

Q. This is actually your guys' first loss as a team. A lot of people say often that you really can't judge a team's character until they have to bounce back from something like this. Can you talk a little about the character of this team as you've seen it so far, and how you think they will be able to bounce back from what's really been the first negative in the column for them so far.
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Well, thus far, everything's going pretty good for us, so I don't have a history with this team relative to, we've faced adversity and how we reacted, and this is the first time.

I can tell you what I expect. I expect us to come out and play, even like we played tonight, we played with effort, we played with passion and we don't let things in the past control what we do in the present.

My expectation: We'll come out and we will play excellently against Japan. I don't think this will have any effect on us. These guys are professionals. They will file this one away. They will wash it off in the shower and we'll be ready to go for Japan.

Q. What did you get from today's contest, and especially you have a game against Team Japan tomorrow.
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Well, basically, there were no surprises. When you play against accomplished big league, offensive players, if you don't make good pitches, you will pay the price for it. That's not a secret. That's something we know going in. We didn't learn anything that we didn't know. We know that to be a fact; when you don't make good pitches, you get behind big league hitters, they make you pay.

If we do that against Japan, that will be the same. That will be the same case. We need to do a better job of executing our pitches. That would be No. 1. I thought we had some good offensive approaches tonight, even though Jair did a really good job. We hit a lot of balls hard at people.

I think offensively we were fine. But we just didn't pitch well tonight. We got behind and made bad pitches; and not only got behind, but we made noncompetitive pitches when we were behind in the count.

Q. Early in the game, Team Netherlands used a sacrifice bunt, and to me it looks like Team Netherlands, it's a do-or-die situation game. Did you feel any special feeling that the Netherlands played very seriously?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: You know, every team in this tournament plays seriously. I don't think anybody takes anybody lightly. There's no throw-away games in this thing. Everybody comes to play, and their intent is to play their A Game, and they don't waste at-bats. We don't waste at-bats. Japan is not going to waste at-bats. Cuba is not going to waste at-bats. Nobody takes this thing lightly. I think every time they tee it up here in the WBC, that people take this thing seriously.

Q. A while ago, you mentioned that the play against Japan, the key for the play against Japan is location for the command for the starting pitcher. If you can mention the starting pitcher for Team Japan's game, can you please? If not, that's fine.
JERRY WEINSTEIN: Yeah, undecided. Not sure who we're going to start against Japan.

Q. If you have an option, what type of pitcher you would like to send as a starter to play against Japan?
JERRY WEINSTEIN: A guy that throws about a hundred. That would be the guy I want to throw. Since we don't have that guy, we need a -- that was a joke. (Laughter).

Actually we just need a premium target hitter that can change speeds. Just like, it's a real -- baseball is a real simple game. If you hit your target and you can change speeds, you've got a chance against anybody. That goes for Japan, Cuba or Netherlands. That would be the hope for us when we play Japan; that we do an outstanding job of locating the ball and have the ability to change speeds with more than one pitch.

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