Our pitching has been great the whole tournament and we came through with big hits. |
Santana wants to pitch against the Dominican. I'm telling you, these guys are making it easy for me. All I have to do is write out the lineup. Carlos Zambrano wants to do the same thing. I don't do anything, thank God. I just write the names down. |
That basically was the game. |
That really surprised me because he's supposed to start today, at least that's what we thought. He's supposed to close the game today. He wasn't there either. |
That's just the way it is. When you have an owner like George Steinbrenner, you have to sacrifice your prospects in order to get a good team. |
That's one thing in this game, you have to be strong mentally. If you're not strong mentally, you're done. |
The pitching has been great. They all want the ball. It's making it tough for me when I get to the ballpark, because I see all these guys going to my office and they all want the ball. But we've got to make a decision and tonight it was the right one. |
The pitching worked very nicely today, as expected. Freddy [Garcia] pitched very strong innings, and Carlos [Silva], you saw how intense he was. |
The Venezuelan reporters, they don't interview you, they want to tell you their way, 'You've got to put this guy here, play this guy.' But it was great. I got to manage all those [top players], it was a good experience for me. And I had a great time. |
There were a lot of long faces and guys with tears in their eyes. |
These guys are proven hitters in the major leagues. There really wasn't much to do. They're our best hitters and I wasn't going to sit them on the bench or put them at the bottom of the order. |
These guys enjoy the competition. They are baseball players -- that's what they do. Because they are representing the country makes it more special. I expect good things. There is a lot of pride for Venezuela. |
These guys, they want to be honored. They want to play. We have a good pitching staff, and we have a good lineup, too. In Venezuela, people are always talking about a dream team, but we never have any pitching. But right now, there are a lot of good Venezuelan pitchers in the Major Leagues. |
They did a very good job against our hitters. They threw a lot of strikes. When we were behind, they threw a lot of breaking balls and changeups. |
They're dead fastball hitters. Every time they saw one, they jumped on it. They took advantage of that today. |