AL DIVISION SERIES: MARINERS v WHITE SOX

October 5, 2000

Jerry Manuel

JERRY MANUEL: First of all, let me congratulate the Seattle Mariners. They played extremely well this particular series, pitched well, hit well, fielded well. They deserve to win the series. They've went through some struggles at the end where they felt like they might not make it, and they made it and came in and played a good level of baseball at the right time. They did everything right. They out-hit us, they outplayed us, they outmanaged us. My congratulations to them. My hat is off to them and to the entire organization. To answer your question, the ball to Kelly Wunsch, he felt he had a shot to still get him once the ball was hit, and obviously wasn't able to make the play.

JERRY MANUEL: There's no doubt about it. When we actually left out of this interview room, we felt 80 pitches, 6 innings, we would have been thrilled with that. But he ended up with I think 92 pitches and 6 innings, and really showed the heart of a lion the way he performed. And that was just a great effort. Our team really played good baseball. We just didn't stay around long enough for things to shift our way. We played good baseball. Ray Durham played good baseball. Valentin played good baseball. Obviously, Frank didn't hit. But it was a team thing; it wasn't one guy; it wasn't one man. We all lost it. We lost to a team that's playing good baseball.

JERRY MANUEL: They did a tremendous job, Rhodes, Paniagua, Mesa, they came in and they really shut the door. And we're not a very good -- seems like we're not a very good day team, or what have you. Some shadows might have had something to do with that. But they pitched us well. They attacked our weakness, and they pitched us well. Everything they did was right. And again, my hat is off to them. They played tremendous baseball.

JERRY MANUEL: Well, in that particular situation, there's really a lot of things that go through your head, but you really are just hoping for basically a pop-up or you've got your best pitcher out there or a strike out. And we felt that in that particular situation, Foulke with a good change-up, had a possible chance to get those things done. But really, when you're in that situation, it's just a wish one way or the other. The only thing that can happen in that situation is they mess it up. There's nothing we can do. We're already behind the 8 ball.

JERRY MANUEL: Not really. In that particular count, no. I think it was basically like a safety squeeze. It was really hard, it wasn't one where -- he could have easily popped that ball up, but he didn't. We happened to be in a tough situation. We put ourselves in it, and they executed at the right time, and we didn't.

JERRY MANUEL: The reason we went after Guillen, we had Foulke in that situation, and we thought we could get a strike out again or a pop-up or something like that. Guillen hadn't really hit the whole series, and he's facing a guy out there, hitting in the shadows and that type of thing. There's been a lot of strikeouts in this particular series, so that was -- we felt like, okay, we made the right decision, and it just didn't happen.

JERRY MANUEL: I spoke to individuals, each of them individually, and thanked them for a tremendous year, and reminded them that we have to remember this feeling come Spring Training. We're a very young club. It was a good experience. Obviously, we are left somewhat empty. So hopefully we'll have the hunger and put forth the effort to put ourselves back in this particular situation again in the coming years.

JERRY MANUEL: I don't think the -- the thing that basically hurt us was youthful swings. I thought we pitched well enough to compete and to win, but I thought we had some youthful swings early in the series that really kind of set the tone. And you expect it, you talk about it. But until they experience it, it's difficult for them to react like you would like them to react. But I like our team. Our team has played tremendous baseball, and I thought we played good baseball here. We just didn't get the job done.

JERRY MANUEL: Again, they made every play. I thought a big play was the line drive that Ray hit to David Bell to again an inning, that we lined out there. We lined out to center, and I don't know whether they walked or flew out that time. But they played magnificent baseball. It took that type of baseball to beat us. They played great baseball. Again, my hat is off to them. They made every defensive play. They came in and executed. Their starters got them to that particular point. They're on a roll right now, and hopefully they can continue to play well. They played extremely well. I'm very happy for them, and I'm glad we got an opportunity to really experience this. But obviously, we could have done a little better, but we didn't.