The baseball gods are showing me a little bit of everything this year. We just seem to make a mistake at the most inappropriate time.

But he's played a lot of baseball, you can tell, ... He's got a more natural flow. The kids in his country [the Dominican Republic] play a lot and gain a lot of baseball poise. He seems sure of himself.

It's just a matter of going through the pains of learning how to play winning baseball, ... That's really what it boils down to.

We're just going through the process of learning how to play winning baseball. The bottom line is that we're learning the hard way.

He's a tough kid. He's a competitor. You know, the baseball gods just weren't with us tonight.

The baseball gods owed us one, but I think we earned it, too.