WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL C - CANADA VS COLOMBIA

March 14, 2023

Jolbert Cabrera

Chase Field

Team Colombia

Postgame Press Conference

Canada - 5, Colombia - 0

Q. After a tremendous game versus Mexico that you guys won, you lose to Great Britain, now against Canada. What has changed from then to now? What has happened to the team, so that things have changed?

JOLBERT CABRERA: It's not a secret. Our offense is dead, practically. Today we only had one runner that got to second base, and it was in the ninth inning. It's difficult to win games if you're not hitting, if you're not swinging. And we didn't swing at all today.

Q. I analyze all three games. The first one, it's not included because you were much more than you needed to. The second and the third, the pitching, from Great Britain, they dominated. They dominated Colombia and today, let's not even talk about that. What did you see about the pitching from their team? What was going on? Why were we dead?

JOLBERT CABRERA: The things that happened, our hitters, it's very tricky. We're always trying to -- if somebody does a hit, we always think get one back to back. We were only able to do in it the ninth inning today, and again on the eighth or ninth hitter. And the first hitters were the ones who were able to do hits.

And yesterday happened when the heart of your lineup does not hit, you're going to have very little opportunities to win games.

Q. What did you see from the Canada starter Skirrow. What made it difficult to string hits off of him?

JOLBERT CABRERA: I feel we didn't make the adjustment of crowding the plate on him a little bit. He was throwing a lot of fastballs, cutters and sliders, and everything breaking away.

We didn't make the adjustments necessary to connect with the ball better. A lot of weak fly balls to right field. I think at one point in the game we got three or four straight. So we didn't make that adjustment in time. He continued to pound that part of the zone.

Q. The offense that was dead in this Classic to right now, there's also a word (indiscernible) with the starting pitcher and the reliever that did not work. And the big difference, the previous Classic that we had very close games that was --

JOLBERT CABRERA: I do not agree with this. Obviously maybe yesterday's game, but not today's game, the relievers were fantastic. It was 1-0, 2-0. We have opportunities to win. The problem was that we just did not hit. We just did not hit. The pitching was fantastic.

Q. Why did you wait a lot to use Adrian Sanchez since he has experience in Major League Baseball?

JOLBERT CABRERA: We didn't try to -- they sent us -- they hadn't used a left pitcher since Urias. So we do the theory of right, right batters. So we wanted to give an opportunity to a boy like Jordan Diaz, so that we can show what he's made of in this Classic.

Defensively and offensively, Dayan, he looked really good at the plate. And that's what's going on. We were thinking that Adrian, with all respect, he's had his best times, but he was just here as a sub and he knew about this.

Q. What are you going to do to bring up the mood since you have to face the United States? What are you going to do? It's also life and death game if we're thinking of the next WBC?

JOLBERT CABRERA: We're going to continue working. We'll try to keep up the mood for the boys. We can't do anything else, but come give a good game against the United States. We cannot do anything more. We played well and unfortunately we didn't have the victories that we needed. But we're going to keep competing.

Q. Who is throwing tomorrow?

JOLBERT CABRERA: A bullpen day.