“It just wasn’t our day.”
Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider swallowed his disappointment after losing a scoreless ballgame.
“It just wasn’t our day,” Schneider said in an interview following the Blue Jays’ 0-1 loss to the Cincinnati Reds at Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati, Ohio, on Monday (Sept. 19).
The Jays were unable to capitalize on their offense despite a strong outing from starter Jose Berrios, who pitched 5 2/3 innings of one-hit ball with four walks and eight strikeouts. They went 0-for-6 with runners in scoring position and stranded six. They had runners in scoring position in every inning from the first through the third, but were unable to capitalize.
Schneider said, “I saw pitches I should have hit, but I didn’t. They’re pitches we usually hit. Again, it wasn’t our day. We missed opportunities.”
“It was a matter of executing the game plan,” he said. After Dalton Basho’s double in the second inning, we didn’t hit the pitches we needed to hit. We didn’t execute our game plan.”
On facing unfamiliar pitcher Brett Kennedy, he said, “I had a lot of information. He’s a guy who throws a sinker and his best pitch is his changeup, and he works the corners. We handled it well enough. We should have adjusted to that as the game went on. Again, we had pitches that we should have hit and we didn’t capitalize. It just wasn’t our day.”
“It was a baseball play,” he said of Vladimir Guerrero’s intelligent throw from the infield in the bottom of the seventh. “It would have been different at home on artificial turf. I knew this was natural grass and the ball would stop instead of bounce. I saw that the runner wasn’t running properly and I reacted well. If they’re not doing what they’re supposed to do, you have to take advantage of that,” he said.
“He was great,” he said of Berrios, who started. “The only problem was the pitch count. He had a little bit of a high strikeout count, which wasn’t really an advantage. Still, the fastball was in the right spot. It’s dangerous to give up that many free runs against a team like this, but he pitched really well.”
“I came in with the mindset to be aggressive, and that’s what I did,” Berrios said. I gave up four hits, but I was aggressive,” Berrios said of his performance.
When asked about his mindset when pitching in close games, he said, “You never know how the game is going to go. Whether we’re winning, tying, or losing, we have to throw the ball. That’s what I did today,” he said, conveying his thoughts.온라인바카
He added, “I know we have a chance to go to the postseason. Baseball is such a beautiful sport. Even today, even though we lost 0-1, we had more chances. We’re going to continue to stay positive and not lose faith in ourselves,” he concluded, ready for the rest of the season.