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NL WILDCARD GAME: BREWERS VS NATIONALS

October 1, 2019

Craig Counsell

Chicago, Illinois - postgame

Nationals - 4, Brewers - 3

Q. That game turns on a hit by pitch. How did you see it? What explanation did you get? And how hard is it for a game to turn on something that you probably I assume disagree with?
CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah, I mean you don't get an explanation, that's part of replay. Yeah, I mean, I have -- honestly I saw it once quickly on the scoreboard. I wasn't paying attention to it. They're going to make a call and that's what the call is going to be. I'd have to look at it a couple more times to tell you what exactly I think happened.

Most of our dugout was saying it's really close, but I thought it hit the bat first, and then hit his hand which probably is a foul ball. I thought that should have been the call. That's kind of what we thought in the dugout that the call was going to be.

Q. What do you say, if anything, to Trent? Obviously a 22-year-old is going to feel like that's on him, when there's a number of things that could have gone wrong.
CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah, look, I think that's about playing in these games. That's part of playing in these games. And it's disappointing, and I'm sure Trent is disappointed. But for all these guys, Trent's why we're here. Trent got us here, big part of getting us here. The inning was an ugly inning. Crazy things happen, as do happen. And they got a big hit, and unfortunately the ball -- Trent was being aggressive and trying to get a throw off, and looked like the ball probably kicked back a little bit on him, because it had some spin on it.

Q. Craig, I'm guessing before all that happened you had it set up exactly as you wanted it. You got the two out with Pomeranz, and two out with Josh. Every team wants more runs, but you must have felt good about that?
CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah, I think the game -- it started with Woody, and Woody did an incredible job getting us four innings. It was special. It really was. He was outstanding. Suter got through the inning. It was a struggle. We probably planned on more innings from him, but I just thought that with who was coming up that inning that it was a great inning for Drew to start it. He threw the ball well, and we're six outs away. If you could have told me we'd hand the ball with six outs to go with Josh, that would have fit our script really, really well. It just didn't play.

Q. With how well Drew was pitching, was there a thought of bringing him in the 8th, and how quick of work he does in those two innings?
CRAIG COUNSELL: No. I had Josh out there. Drew had done his job. That's exactly -- that's what I wanted from Drew, get us to the 8th. Drew throws two, Josh throws two. That's -- that was perfect, really. That's how -- we couldn't have drawn it up any better. It went the way we wanted. I wasn't going to go past that with Drew.

Q. If you've addressed this I apologize, but the fact that you lose Yelich down the stretch and the injuries you had to fight through all year long, what's your sense now after this is over and your team in general? I'm sure you're proud of them?
CRAIG COUNSELL: Very proud. These baseball seasons are sacred. You think that you don't get many of them, and you don't get many chances like this. And I'm so proud of the way we battled and the urgency that we played with and how together we became, better than anybody thought we could be.

It was a wonderful effort. Things didn't go our way tonight, but I'm incredibly proud of what they accomplished. It's an incredible group. They accomplished a lot. They should be proud. This is a difficult night. No reason to hang your heads with the season we have, absolutely none for us. I'm really proud of what we did.

Q. That's kind of what I was going to ask, that sounds like that was your message to them?
CRAIG COUNSELL: Yeah.

Q. How long do you think it will take them to feel that that's what they did and get over this disappointment?
CRAIG COUNSELL: Well, this is a game you think about for a while, of course, right? You're going to think about this game because these opportunities are hard to come by. It's hard to put yourself in the playoffs and get yourself close to winning a Wild Card game.

So it's going to sting, as it should, as we expect. But I still get left with just how we accomplished what we did. And I think we should be proud of that. And we did it together. That's how we did it.

FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports

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