WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL B - CHINA VS JAPAN

March 9, 2023

Dean Treanor

Tokyo Dome

Team China

Pregame Press Conference

Q. Within an hour we'll have the opening game of the tournament. What's in your mind, and how is the team's condition?

DEAN TREANOR: Players are fired up. They're out there taking batting practice right now. But the atmosphere in our clubhouse is through the roof. They're excited. They're excited for the challenge of tonight's game, and we're going to show well tonight.

Q. Within the atmosphere you will have the opening starting pitcher Ohtani. Do you have any game plan for him?

DEAN TREANOR: We have an approach against him. Obviously it's a big challenge for us. But like I said, the players are excited, and it's a chance to play against somebody who is known all over the world, and especially here.

But they want the challenge, and so we'll see what happens tonight. But we have our work cut out for us.

Q. Tell us about tonight's key players on your roster, if you can mention them.

DEAN TREANOR: I think our 3 and 4 hitters, Masago and Chen Chen, they've been swinging the bat really, really well this last week. I think they'll be the key.

And Ray Chang is in our lineup in the 5 hole. He's been in every WBC so far, so he's probably our most experienced player in the WBC.

I think at the top of our lineup, we need our guys to get on base for Masago and Chen Chen.

Q. Tonight we'll have a packed house. What can you show to this international audience?

DEAN TREANOR: The world. That's our plan. Like I've said before, we want to take the atmosphere here, the energy that's in the building tonight, we want to get that to us. We want to take advantage of that.

We've obviously talked about it with the players. We know it's going to be loud. We know it's a full house, which just adds to it. It just adds to the excitement.

Like I said, we're ready for it.

Q. This team is a young team lacking the experience of international games. I wonder what's your emphasis for the preparation and for the game plan? Will you set up some specific goals for the players or for the game?

DEAN TREANOR: Our training has gone well. We were in Shaoxing, China, in November. It snowed on us there, which was kind of exciting. We took advantage of that, built a snowman and all that stuff, and then we went to south China after Chinese new year until we came to Japan a few days ago.

The training has gone really well. If you look at what we were at the start of training until now, it's a huge difference. We're improving every day. We are young. We've got a lot of young players. I think our starting pitcher tonight is 19 years old.

But it's good to have the young players. They bring a lot of energy. You're going to see it tonight.

The experience obviously helps with Ray Chang, and we have another pitcher that has a lot of experience. But I think the young players -- and they're going to be the future of baseball in China. That's what part of this is is that we're trying to build a baseball culture in China. It's started. There's now a lot of media that's putting out there. There's a lot of stuff on social media. There's a lot of videos out there of us training and so on, so I think it's drawing a lot of interest in China, which is a good thing.

Hopefully we can show well here to create even more excitement, but obviously it's going to take -- it's going to be a process for us to really develop that culture, but I like where we are. I like where this team is at, and they're proud to represent China.