MIAMI, Florida — It has been said in baseball to always have a short memory and turn the page, that’s the philosophy that Puerto Rico manager Yadier Molina adopted after his team suffered its first loss on Sunday in the World Baseball Classic against Venezuela.
After digging into a 9-1 hole after five innings, the Puerto Rican answered back with four runs in the sixth and another in the eighth before finally falling 9-6.
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“We fought hard. We wanted to enter the game and be able to be competitive,” Molina said in an interview after the game at LoanDepot Park before giving all the credit to the Venezuelan team.
“They have a great team and we saw ourselves. We fought. It’s one of those games where you try (to recover), but you have to fix and hit well,” he added.
Puerto Rico (1-1) will now face Israel on Monday, which first contested with a win over Nicaragua, in the main stage of its expectation to advance to the quarterfinals.
Molina highlighted the ferocity of his team that was in position to shorten the lead in the eighth, having runners on the corners with no outs before retiring Javier Báez on a short fly ball and Eddie Rosario.
hit in a double play.
“We fought until the end. That sixth inning put us more in the game and we hope to stay tomorrow (Monday) with that reason (Monday),” he said. Their offense is very good. Finally we got better at bats… We have to see if we can continue against Israel.”
Starter José BerrÃos had an unfortunate night, giving up six runs – five earned – on five hits in a little more than one inning of work.
“Of course it’s not something he planned, but it’s part of the game. We trust BerrÃos and someone has a bad day. Not good for him, but we trust him,” Molina said.
The manager, for his part, did not want to speculate on Wednesday’s match against the Dominican Republic that could decide the classification.
“We are deservedly contracted and focused on tomorrow’s game. We are trying to turn the page on what happened today (Monday). When tomorrow’s game is over, we will have a day and we can focus on Wednesday,” he concluded.
