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WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC POOL D: SAN JUANMarch 6, 2009Bert BlylevenRod DelmonicoSidney PonsonSAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO MODERATOR: Good afternoon members of the press. We appreciate your presence this afternoon. Again we give a warm welcome to the Major League Baseball World Classic in 2009, the first round in San Juan Puerto Rico. I want to remind you all that for those of you, for your benefit we have headsets so you can enjoy the conference in your language of preference. I ask you again to turn off your cell phones or put them on silent mode. Today we have, at this time, the Netherlands team. We have the attendance of their manager Mr. Delmonico and player Sidney Ponson and the pitching coach Bert Blyleven. Let's open the session to questions now. There will be a mic to ask questions. I am going to ask you to identify yourselves with your name and the media. Q. Sidney, how much are you using this as a chance to catch on with a major league club this year? SIDNEY PONSON: This is going to be great here. If I pitch good I might be calling my agent. If I pitch bad, I don't think so. I'm here to pitch. When I go out tomorrow hopefully I can do a good job. BERT BLYLEVEN: As his pitching coach Sidney has done a very good job. He's come into the camp and is in great shape. He's one of the better pitchers on our pitching staff. He's attacking the strike zone. That's what my philosophy is. He's in game shape. Q. Is he ready to pitch in the big leagues again? BERT BLYLEVEN: I think he is. He's got the slider, curveball, and split finger changeup. He's throwing all four pitches. He pitched the other day against the Pirates, it was a very small strike zone, but he was hitting his spots, and he did a great job. Q. Sidney, how much do you want to be back? SIDNEY PONSON: I want to be back. I still have the fire in my belly. It didn't run out yet. Like I said, I'm honored to be on the Netherlands team right now. The first time I wasn't ready to pitch. I am right now. We'll go out tomorrow and have fun and try to win the ballgame. Q. How long have you been together? Are you ready 50 percent, 80 percent? ROD DELMONICO: We started in January with the players from Holland and the players in occur saw were working with Bam Bam. We were working separately for about a month. We're in our third week as a team together collectively. I think we've had an opportunity to play seven games which has given us about 20-21 at bats per player that's going to start tomorrow. I think we're at game speed. Our guys have really worked hard along with our position player, Sidney and Randall Simon have done a tremendous job in the locker room working with our younger players and really setting a tone in our practices. I'm very impressed with them. They've been great players on and off the field for us. That's kind of trickled through our locker room and up and down the bench. I think we're as together and ready, being together three weeks. Q. I have a question for the manager. You used to have in your selection, Kingdom of the Netherlands, players like Andruw Jones, Jurgens, and others three years ago. It will not be this year. What does that mean for the selection? ROD DELMONICO: You've seen a lot of players drop out for a number of reasons. One, injuries. Maybe it was in the best interest to stay with their club. Or maybe the club thought it was in the best interest to stay. We hope the next time it comes around we'll have availability for all the players. Because you can imagine we'd be a little bit stronger if we had Jurgens and Martiz and Bernadina. It would make us a little bit stronger as some of the other clubs as well, Panama, Dominican has lost some players. We hope as this thing grows that all the clubs will be able to get whoever they need. Q. Martiz and Jurgens are pitchers that will be the three pitchers here in Puerto Rico. The pitching staff now, what can you tell me and what can we expect from the pitching staff here this year? ROD DELMONICO: I'll let Bert answer that. I'm excited with the job he's done with our pitchers. I'll let him expound on that a little bit. BERT BLYLEVEN: I think what we're hoping to do is attack the strike zone, don't walk anybody, especially against the Dominican Republic because of the all-star lineup that they have. I'm sure that's Sidney goal right there, throw strikes, get ahead of the count. Here at the Classic there's a pitch limit. So we'll stay within that pitch limit for Sidney Ponson and the relievers who come in after him. Basically try to get that ball over the plate with good stuff on it and try to hit your spots and be aggressive. That's all a pitching coach can say. That's all I can say to Sidney Ponson. Enjoy it, have fun, play it like it's a World Series game, like it might be the last game you ever pitch. That's the way hopefully they'll all approach it. Q. When are you going to be in the Hall of Fame? BERT BLYLEVEN: I hope so one day. I have no control of that. It's up to the writers. Last year was my 12th year on the ballot. I have three more years. Hopefully that day will come. Thank you. Q. How many players and from how many countries? ROD DELMONICO: We probably have 28, probably half and half. 14 from Curaçao, 14 from the Netherlands, so we're about half and half. Q. What is your pitching rotation going to be? ROD DELMONICO: We're going to go Ponson tomorrow. Rick VandenHurk will pitch game two, and then we'll throw Tommy Stuifbergen for game three. Q. I asked the manager this morning, in this group that the Netherlands are in, there's Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, the possibility of you seeing Netherlands qualifying, what are they? ROD DELMONICO: It reminds me of the passage in the bible of David and Goliath. We're not Goliath. We're David. For us to advance we've got to pitch, play defense, timely hitting. And we've got to maximize our opportunities on offense. And we've got to be aggressive on the mound. We've got to make them swing the bat. We can't afford to give them extra outs in an inning. We can't afford to walk people. Collectively if we play together, anybody can beat anybody on any given day. That's why baseball is one of the greatest games. We do understand that we have a mountain to climb here. That's the fun part. That's why we all coach and play baseball and are in this game. You love to compete. And this is going to be a lot of fun. Our guys are looking forward to the challenge. Q. Can I ask how much interest did you see in the young people and the fans in Holland, and how much do they really enjoy knowing that your team is coming to Puerto Rico for these games? ROD DELMONICO: I think baseball in Holland has grown over the years. It's a popular sport. We have the Rotterdam tournament every year in July that will pack in 7,000 a game, and they draw a lot of attention. This is a great opportunity for us to showcase our team back to the Netherlands, because they're going to actually be able to see the game live on ESPN 2. I think that's good for our country and for the young players involved. Robert Einhorn has done a tremendous job in developing baseball in the country. We have six baseball academies that are working on teaching young players how to play, so they can only have a chance to play Major League Baseball, but also play in the professional leagues in Holland or play on the national team. So baseball is a very strong sport. It takes second place to soccer, of course, because soccer dominates in Europe. But it's growing, and this can only do great things for baseball in Holland. Q. You compare yourself to David. What weapons does David have against Goliath for this series, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. It looks like in the paper you're the underdog in Pool D. ROD DELMONICO: We are. But we've got Sidney Ponson, and Sidney has a rock in his back pocket. BERT BLYLEVEN: And a big sling. ROD DELMONICO: And a big sling. We're going to start with him and let it go. Q. I wonder for both Bert and Skipper, one for Bert, tomorrow, pitching-wise, could you tell us what it looks like for you to follow up on Sidney as a starter. And were there any close decisions you had to make in managing as far as what lineup we'll see tomorrow, last minute decisions or even something you're still thinking about? BERT BLYLEVEN: I think first of all we're going to have to feed off of Sidney. He's on that 70 pitch count limit. Rob Cordemans is going to start second. After that is pretty much we'll see how the game goes. Rob has had an outstanding three weeks with us. He's thrown strikes. He's kind of deserved that. He's a starter in the Netherlands, and he deserves to follow Sidney whenever Sidney -- hopefully Sidney will be done after six innings, Rob can go through three, and we can win. That's what we're looking for. ROD DELMONICO: I think the decisions are more on the pitching, matchups, who we're going to bring out of the pen. We're pretty set with our lineup. The DH spot can be in a platoon situation as left field. We're fortunate that we've got five or six outfielders that are right/left hand hitters. In the middle of the game we can make some moves and still be pretty strong in the outfield defensively. Sidney De Jong is getting better every day and swung the bat well the last couple of days. So we've got, we feel, like a one-two punch behind the plate, defense and offense together. We'll get in the game and see what happens after game one. We do have some guys off the bench that can help us, and that's a plus. I think we can make some moves in the middle of the game that will help us generate some offense. End of FastScripts |
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