WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL B - GREAT BRITAIN VS MEXICO

March 6, 2026

Brad Marcelino

Daikin Park

Team Great Britain

Postgame Press Conference

Mexico - 8, Great Britain - 2

Q. I wanted to ask, obviously not the result you wanted, but the way the team was able to hang with a very good Mexico team for seven, eight innings, what's your take away with that?

BRAD MARCELINO: We expected it. I don't know if "hang" for us is the right word, because we expected to go in and win. There was a couple things that hurt us from an execution standpoint, some big pieces there.

Ivan Johnson put a good swing on, thrown out at the plate, could have taken some momentum there. But overall, we battled. So, proud of how those guys did that.

Q. You mentioned the play at the plate. Were you okay with the send there, or was the ball just hit so hard it kind of resulted in that?

BRAD MARCELINO: Yeah, I love it. Love the send. You know what the back end of that bullpen looks like. All of those guys are high-leverage guys. It is hard enough to stack and build an inning. I think once you -- he battled in that at-bat. And we knew we were going to take some shots. So, yeah, I do, I like the aggressiveness there.

Q. You guys had pitched so well until that Aranda at-bat. Do you think that at-bat, his homer changed the game right there?

BRAD MARCELINO: Any time that you are kind of fighting for momentum and that happens, right, obviously that's a big, big shift in momentum there. We handed the ball to Tristan Beck, arguably one of our better arms on the back end, big league arms. So, happy in that situation. It's just the execution of what we did.

Q. You left nine runners on base, five of them in scoring position. Can you speak to those missed opportunities?

BRAD MARCELINO: My son actually brought that one up. He reminded me on the way in.

You're trying not to leave guys on base. And you fight for the spots. But, again, the arms there are pretty good. They are trying to get us out. I thought the approach was good thought we were on a good game plan. It's just about mistake over execution.

It's definitely and area where we know we need to be better against a team like that. You have to cash in on the situations when you have that type of traffic. Traffic was great.

Thought our guys battled. We were putting the ball in play, grounding out at-bats, tough at-bats. Just didn't kind of scratch out some of those runs.

Q. Can you speak just on playing in that environment, what it does for a lot of your guys and for British baseball who maybe aren't used to that?

BRAD MARCELINO: Obviously it is electric. It felt like it did in '23. The Mexican fans are awesome, bring a ton of passion and energy. It was great to be in front of that environment.

I think our guys, you know, you always tell them to enjoy the moment, but you get hyped up in the competition. There's a couple of times I think it is great for the guys to experience it. I think it also shows that for us as a group, we can compete, right, on this stage, which is great for us.