WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL D - NICARAGUA VS PUERTO RICO

March 11, 2023

Yadier Molina

LoanDepot Park

Team Puerto Rico

Postgame Press Conference

Puerto Rico 9, Nicaragua 1

Q. Great competition, great effort by both teams.

YADIER MOLINA: It was a balanced game, but we had good pitching. It was a good team effort. Obviously, the other teams have very good pitching and very good teams. As a whole, we are not playing with weak teams. All the teams are very good. That young pitcher did a good job at the beginning of the game, but the coaches made some adjustments with the players, and we were able to win.

Q. What did you think of Stroman's presence on the mound?

YADIER MOLINA: Well, Marcus is a very young player, and he likes competing. We as Puerto Ricans, we like to show the emotions, feelings, and we like that. The players are adapted to Marcus, and he has adapted to us, and that's very good.

Q. What did you think of Vazquez's at-bat? That really set off that rally?

YADIER MOLINA: The walk, right? Very good. That's when everything -- it was like 1-2, 0-2, he was down, so great at-bat by him. It started everything, and then Machete with the hit-and-run. It was good. That was a great at-bat by him.

Q. (Off microphone).

YADIER MOLINA: Well, yes. I thank God we were able to stick to the game plan. We used the pitchers we wanted to use, and we were able to do that. Thanks to the offense, we were able to use the pitchers that we had planned.

Q. Can you talk about any changes in your game plan for next game?

YADIER MOLINA: Clearly we have to play one game at a time. Now we have to see what the result is today in the game between Dominican Republic and Venezuela, and this is our mindset. We are going to play game after game, one game at a time.