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WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC POOL D: SAN JUAN


March 9, 2009


Rod Delmonico

Randall Simon

Rick Vandenhurk


SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO

ROD DELMONICO: Puerto Rico really pitched well today. Came out, set the tone. We pitched out of some jams. We gave extra outs. It's really difficult to give extra outs to a really good lineup, and that hurt us.

Q. What do you expect to do tomorrow against the Dominican Republic? How do you see that game?
ROD DELMONICO: I think we're going to do the same as we've done the last two games. We're going to play the hardest we can. It all starts with pitching. We feel like we've got a great pitcher starting tomorrow for us.
We're not going to change anything. We'll come out and play the way we've had played the last two games.

Q. Randall, I know that you speak Spanish. What did you think about the, the team Puerto Rico, being full of big league players, many of whom you know competitively. And the Netherlands who was not given much of a chance to win.
RANDALL SIMON: The first thing is I thank God. I appreciate this opportunity to be here in Puerto Rico, but what I think is I'm very proud of my fellow players because they came out to win. We played hard for the whole game. And naturally we have to know that Puerto Rico has a great team.
They are players that are star players. And we never moved back. We know that we have a great team, and we still trust that we have a chance to go to the second half, and we are going to do it.
With God with us we can go again with the push that we did in the first game against the Dominican, we can do it again.
I want to say hello to the people here in Puerto Rico, congratulations, because they played well. They played good. We know that playing with a team like Puerto Rico, they never gave up either because they had a chance to score runs. And we had good defense, and we had good pitching, and we ran out of innings.
And they did not fall in that instance. They came back in the 8th inning, and they had a, they took that chance and beat us.
Tomorrow we are going to come with a positive attitude and ready to win. And with God before us we know we are going to be in Miami on the 12th.

Q. The decision to bring in Juan Carlos in such a tight spot, a player with not much experience in this type of competition? What were your thoughts when you brought him in?
ROD DELMONICO: He's had an opportunity to pitch in the Olympics. He pitched against Cuba very well in the Olympics.
For a young player he shows a lot of composure. He's much more mature than his age. I think he proved that today. What a tough environment to pitch in front of, 18-19,000 fans rocking the place. He pitched really, really well and made some great pitches.

Q. Who is pitching tomorrow? Are you guys bringing a new player for tomorrow's game?
ROD DELMONICO: I wish we were. If you could help me out with that one, we could use a private jet. You're not allowed to bring anybody. We don't have any injuries to bring anybody in. We're throwing Tommy Stuifbergen, who has pitched real well for the last two weeks. He threw a heck of a game against Minnesota last week. We're going to give him the ball to see how long he can go, how far he can go with 70 pitches, and take it from there.
Really it's pitch by pitch for us. We can't look beyond the first inning.

Q. I would like to know for the coach, you play the Dominican Republic tomorrow again. The pressure is on them. They are supposed to be the team that advances to the next round. Do you guys have that mentality, you play tomorrow, do they have the pressure that they already lost to you? What is the mentality going into tomorrow?
ROD DELMONICO: From what I understand, they're supposed to beat us 9-0 tomorrow. We will come out and play hard and give our best effort. That's all we can do. That's all I can ask my guys to do, come out enthusiastic, give their best effort, and take it one inning at a time.

Q. VandenHurk, you pitched very good as the opener in this game. The relief was not as effective to maintain that advantage. Do you feel satisfied even though the bullpen was not able to observe that advantage, as minimal as it was, at some point in time?
RICK VANDENHURK: We go out and try to pitch and do the best we can. Stuff like that happens at times. Of course we want to win. That didn't happen tonight. But tomorrow we've got to go out and play those guys hard again.

Q. Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, has been surprising to you? The Dominican Republic was a very tough, close game to the 8th inning.
ROD DELMONICO: I'm very proud of our guys. Our guys, as I've said two days ago, really practiced hard over the last two months and of course collectively for about three weeks. We put a lot of sweat out there on the field trying to prepare to be ready.
I think for the most part we played great defense, and we pitched really well. You can't give extra outs to a great hitting club. You can't give four or five outs in an inning. It makes it very difficult.
We were fortunate to pitch out of some jams. We dropped two fly balls we could have caught. One was a very tough play for Randall. That was a hit or miss. We dropped the ball behind home plate. You just can't give a great hitting club any extra outs. We pitched out of those and made some great defensive plays.
Randall, the play that he made stopping on the button to keep them from going to third base. I don't know we did anything defensively on the passed ball, other than we ran back there and got it real quick. We stopped them from scoring there. We were fortunate. We got out of a couple of jams. I'm very proud of our guys, extremely proud. They've given their best effort. That's all I can ask for as a manager.

Q. A couple of times you saw Juan Carlos on the mound and went out and talked to him. What was it like seeing him and what did you say to him? And then what was it like seeing him going and actually shut down Pudge Rodriguez, a Hall of Famer and Carlos Beltran, one the best players in baseball.
RANDALL SIMON: The only thing I said to him is I believe him. I know those guys, they're really good hitters. They're all-star players. If you throw the pitches the way you want to and keep the ball down, you're always going to have a chance. And that's the thing that I always focus on. My other guys that don't know those type of hitters, to let them know the way to pitch them.
When you come and you talk to them and you let them know that you know that we're behind you 200 percent, I just give him the confidence that he needs to go out there and know at the time that he can get him out.
And at the time he did. And he showed me what it's all about. And knowing a young guy like him coming into that situation and do what he did, I'm really proud of him. That just let's you know what the Netherlands team is all about.
We've got great guys, and we all believe in each other. We're going to keep backing each other up and knowing that we can make it. It's not over until it's over. Tomorrow is another day and we're going to come back hard for another win.

Q. Randall Simon, please. You go into a game, a decisive game against the Dominican Republic. You are one of the ones who knows most of the Dominican players because of the amount of time that you've played there. Are you really the main advisor to the manager? How do you feel about that?
RANDALL SIMON: Well, the first thing is that I thank God for our manager, Rod, he made me the captain of the team because he believes in me. That is something that I am very grateful for.
And I know that what we have to do is to come out tomorrow like the first day when we played. No one thought that we could beat the Dominican team. And so tomorrow we come in with the same love and the same enthusiasm to show that we have a good team and we can play ball.
And naturally all of the players that the Dominican have, they're all my good friends, all of them. Anyway, when we go out in that field, we are going out to win.
With God before us, God is going to give us the strength to go to the second series in Miami, and show that Holland, Netherlands, as we're called the underdog. And we will show that we believe in ourselves and we are going to move forward to go to the second series.

End of FastScripts




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