Q. The other night you had the horn guy who was blowing his horn. Tonight you're going to have a sold-out big crowd, loud crowd. How are you guys going to deal with that? How are you going to shut that out and kind of play your game tonight?
MIKE PIAZZA: Yeah, no, I know it's going to be noisy. Basically I think the guys just need to communicate, just not sort of take it for granted that it's going to be normal conditions. These aren't normal conditions. We know the crowd is going to be into it. We know it's going to be loud. I don't think there's going to be one horn, I think there's going to be a lot of horns.
We just have to play our game. We have to play our game, and it's really a great experience for us. I mean, also keeping the way to enjoy it because this is a special game. It's a special game for this country. It's a special game for us, and international baseball.
If you look at it that way and you don't really get into the minutiae of the game and the pressure of the game, you can enjoy it, too, because I want the guys to enjoy it because it's really exciting to play Taipei, Taiwan in front of their home fans and their national team.
If you look at it that way, it's a way of alleviating some pressure, but getting back to your point, yeah, it's going to be difficult. It's going to be loud. We have to -- we'll just communicate, hopefully communicate, and guys have the instincts to make the right decisions, and hopefully the noise won't be a detriment to our performance.
Q. (No translation.)
MIKE PIAZZA: No, I knew the competition was going to be very difficult, and I think teams when they are in different positions will play differently accordingly. I think as a player and as a manager, as a coaching staff, we can't really be too obsessed with the other team's situation. We have to worry about our situation, play our game, because if you do make some bad decisions or you make decisions that you get out of what you're trying to accomplish, you can put yourself in jeopardy for the rest of the tournament.
So you're not really just managing nine innings, you're managing 36 innings of a tournament, so you have to really be careful because pitching is a premium. It's early. The pitching rules are there.
You have to take all that into account.
But the philosophy is on that day, if you get a chance to win, you have to try to win. So it's a balance. You're just trying to strike a balance where you realize that you have other games to play. Obviously after this game we have two more. But tonight is our focus, and we can't really worry about what other teams are doing and what standings are. We just have to play our game and hopefully take advantage of the opportunities we have.
Q. (No translation.)
MIKE PIAZZA: Well, your first question - don't ask me to pronounce his name. We know that he has experience in the U.S., and he has experience facing good hitters. We don't come into this tournament thinking to underestimate our opponent any time. I think as a player, and these players today, you have a balance, as I've said, between scouting and data and personal experience.
If you get into one particular category too much, to me that's not good. You have to take the information about him. Yeah, of course we've seen him, but you also have to make good decisions and execute during the game. That's important.
As far as your other question with the rotation, we came into this tournament with the pitchers we have, and we knew we have to use everyone. It will obviously vary on the amount of pitches they have, and so we just have to act accordingly. We wouldn't take anyone here if we didn't expect them to pitch.
There are guys that have more experience in pressure situations that we want them to be available, but if that's not the case, we have to put in who we think would be the best pitcher in the matchup situations and roll the dice and let it play out.
FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports