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AL DIVISION SERIES: INDIANS VS ASTROS

October 8, 2018

Terry Francona

Cleveland, Ohio - postgame 3

Astros - 11, Indians - 3

THE MODERATOR: We'll take a few questions for Tito.

Q. Tito, you've seen a lot of good teams through the years. Where do you put this relentless Astros group?
TERRY FRANCONA: Oh, I don't know how to rank. They're really good. They present a lot of challenges, and they're worthy of moving on.

Whoever they play, they'll give -- they'll be a handful.

Q. Hey, Terry, anything you would have done differently from a preparation standpoint for this series?
TERRY FRANCONA: No. We prepare pretty extensively. I'd like some of the outcomes to be different, but we felt good going in.

That's an important thing. Not a lot of things went the way we hoped they would.

Q. They scored 14 of their 21 runs in the series in the seventh inning or later. Was there anything in particular about the way their hitters matched up with their relievers that tilted things?
TERRY FRANCONA: I think it's different every game, let alone every inning. I mean, today, we finally give Bregman to hit a ball back to the pitcher and we don't execute the double play.

From there, you have to start playing the infield in, because one more run was too much, and then that leads to crooked number.

Q. Terry, Clevinger, five innings, just that one run. What did you make of his performance tonight?
TERRY FRANCONA: I thought he battled like crazy. I thought he had great stuff. Obviously, a lot of deep counts. I mean, he was close to 100 after 5. They had some really good opportunities, but he made some really good pitches to keep it, and then they gave up the hanging breaking ball to lead off the inning for the one.

But I thought he competed like crazy.

Q. I don't know if you answered this, I apologize if you did, but did Jose Ramirez, was he just pressing too much in this series, or what do you think happened?
TERRY FRANCONA: No, Jose's had a tough last month. When you're not feeling great at the plate, this isn't exactly the recipe to get out of it, facing Verlander and Cole and those guys. They're pretty good.

Q. Terry, I know obviously losing the series is disappointing. But what do you leave here most disappointed about?
TERRY FRANCONA: I don't know. I haven't thought about that. I mean, we haven't even had time to process it. You show up and all we wanted to do today was keep it going so we could play tomorrow.

We got to go home now, before we're ready to. That hurts. It always stings. I just told the guys, we've got a number of guys that are free agents. You know there's going to be some turnover, and it's a real special group to all of us.

So that's a hard one, when you're saying goodbye before you're ready to.

Q. The disappointment of the last two years, losing in the first round, I know you said before last year has nothing to do with this year. But to get to the same spot and to lose again, is it frustration? Is it disappointment? What is it that you can't get over the hump here?
TERRY FRANCONA: Everything. I mean, I'm glad we've had a chance. If you keep giving yourself a chance, there's -- at some point, you believe you'll break through. We haven't been good enough to this point. Nobody's going to quit, quit trying or quit trying to get better.

But, I mean, it is frustrating for sure. I think there's a lot of teams that would like to be in this situation, but when you come up short, you take stock and try to do better.

Q. Do you think that when winning the division as easily as you have the past couple years, does it -- is it hard to say, hey, these are big games now, we have to start playing, or is there nothing like that?
TERRY FRANCONA: I don't feel like that at all. That's not why we lost. Houston outplayed us, and that's why they're moving on. It has nothing to do with what we did in September or April or May or June. They just, they outplayed us.

THE MODERATOR: Thanks a lot, Terry.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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