Oct. 10 Jim Leyland postgame interview

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Q. Can you just give us thoughts, Jim, at this point on what just happened?

JIM LEYLAND: Yeah, well, it's baseball. I mean, that's why this is the greatest game of all. It looked like we were going to get it. We didn't do it. We didn't quite get the 27 outs, that's part of the game.

You get tested all the time in this game. And this is a good test. We were down like the wild card situation was, one game, pretty simple. I thought we played our hearts out. Tonight we just didn't close it out.

Q. What did you see from Max? It looked like he was rolling along in the game and then all of a sudden he started ‑‑

JIM LEYLAND: Well, if you watched the velocity started to drop pretty good. He hasn't really pitched that much lately, the velocity started to drop, 90 to 91. It looked like he was pretty much spent. I think he ‑‑ he felt comfortable, obviously with the move. I think he wanted to face Cespedes, but at this point I could see that the velocity was dropping. I didn't want him to make a mistake and have Cespedes hurt us. That's why we made the move. Max wanted Cespedes, but he was pretty much spent.

Q. I know you've said that I trust my bullpen, I have faith in them and yet Valverde's had his share of problems, Benoit got through fine tonight, but then Valverde just got raked. Can you talk about the pitches that you saw him throw tonight?

JIM LEYLAND: Well, I mean they just hit him. They basically charged him and hit him. He probably didn't get the ball located where he wanted to. The first hit was just out of the reach of Omar. It could have been right at him; it wasn't. They got the hit, then they banged a couple after that, obviously. You tip your hat to them. He probably didn't get the ball where he wanted to. That pretty much sums it up.

He's our guy, and that's just the way it is. We worked hard to get to that point and I thought Benoit got a huge strikeout in the 8th, when he struck out Moss. And certainly I feel comfortable with Jose coming in in that situation. Tonight he just didn't get the job done. That's all part of the game.