Oct. 19 Jim Leyland postgame interview

Q. If Iglesias had fielded the ball cleanly, do you think you could have doubled Ellsbury?

JIM LEYLAND:  I think we could have. It was hit pretty hard. But that's part of the game. I have no problem with that. Probably could have turned that, even though Ellsbury runs good. I think we doubled him once in the series. But that's part of the game.

Q. In the sixth inning after Martinez gets the two runs in, can you talk about the play with Fielder?

JIM LEYLAND:  Well, basically that's a play where you just go and make the throw to the plate. But once again, collectively we just didn't do good enough.

Q. Can you talk about how Boston played all series.

JIM LEYLAND:  Well, both teams played good all series. We had a couple of blunders tonight, but it was a tough series. I want to congratulate the Boston Red Sox, John Farrell, Ben Cherington, the players. They deserve to win, they beat us. And I wish them the best. They played very well and there was a lot of good games.

Like I said, collectively, start with me, the coaches, the players, we just didn't do quite enough.

Q. Did you feel during this series, did the Red Sox do any pitching to you guys that maybe you had not seen all season?

JIM LEYLAND:  No, I don't think so. I thought Buchholz used his curveball. He tipped his hand actually in the paper today, he said he took a page out of Lackey's book and was going to use his curve a little more, and he sure did. It didn't surprise us. And we got him out of there pretty early. He did fine. The bullpen was terrific.

The difference really, when you look at the series, is they hit a couple of big bombs and we just didn't quite do that. They hit a couple of timely, two or three really timely home runs. Big Papi and tonight Victorino.

Q. Look at the pitching, and it was amazing for the most part, I guess maybe the frustrating part you get as good pitching as they can give you and you don't win?

JIM LEYLAND:  That's a good point. Normally if you pitch the way we pitched in this series, you would probably think that you had won.

Q. We've talked about when you would be looking to go for defense there in left field. When you ran for Peralta there in that inning, was that with the expectation that you were going to have to pull out 2‑1 or 3‑1 game?

JIM LEYLAND:  I was not sure it was right or wrong, but I was glad I did it when Ortiz sliced that ball down the left‑field line. It did have something to do with it because Donny Kelly made a nice running catch.

But offensively you take Jhonny's bat out of there, as it turned out it didn't make a difference. It's a Catch‑22, by late in the game it's going to be somebody nasty anyway that maybe nobody hits, we took our shot and Kelly probably saved us a couple runs, maybe more.

Q. In retrospect the Sox pitching was pretty darned good. They were able to maybe match your great efforts or at least keep it close and let the Red Sox do what they do, which is grind out hits and at‑bats.

JIM LEYLAND:  The way I would sum it up is that I thought their starters were good. I thought their bullpen was great. I certainly don't want to sound like I'm taking anything away from their starters, because I'm not. I thought their starters were good. I thought their bullpen was great.