WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC: POOL D - ISRAEL VS NETHERLANDS

March 10, 2026

Brad Ausmus

LoanDepot Park

Team Israel

Postgame Press Conference

Israel 6, Netherlands 2

Q. Brad, thank you for doing this twice a day for the tournament.

BRAD AUSMUS: I don't have a choice.

Q. I asked you this question earlier, but now we have more information. You've now finished 2-2. You have two games. You doubled your win total from 2023. How does this help recruit -- get more people in Israel interested in baseball and will this help you recruit more major leaguers for the 2029 tournament?

BRAD AUSMUS: That's the hope. The game itself was meaningless in the tournament, although third base coach Mark Loretta said we didn't lose, we just ran out of games to play.

But yeah, the hope is that more players become interested in playing for Israel that are eligible, and I think that helps especially in a tournament like the WBC.

Q. First off, congratulations on what was a really fun run for the last couple days. What was your biggest takeaway from these four games and everything that's surrounding this tournament and the guys you've got to experience this with?

BRAD AUSMUS: Well, and I've kind of talked about it all four days that I've been up here. The energy is tremendous. It's amazing to me that even tonight, despite the fact that Netherlands and Israel were no longer in contention, how much energy it was and how much of a sense of urgency there was in our dugout to win that game.

Q. In terms of growing the game in Israel and growing interest in the game in Israel, how much does this extra victory in this pool play do you think really add to the progress in that in both growing and generating interest in it?

BRAD AUSMUS: I don't know that I can quantify how much it helps. I just think that every time an Israeli team wins a baseball game in a big tournament like this, it helps. It's incremental. It's slow, but it helps.

I think the people with the Israeli Federation are in it for the long haul.

Q. What were your thoughts on Harrison Cohen tonight, and how excited are you to see him in a Yankee uniform possibly soon?

BRAD AUSMUS: Yeah. I got a text this morning saying, are you going to get Cohen in there or not, the guys want to see him pitch, or see him play. We had a couple times against Nicaragua, we had spots where he might come in, but then Dean went a little deeper than we thought. He was going to throw today regardless, it was just a matter of where.

Q. And how do you reflect in these last 14 years of the growth of Israel baseball to when you were managing the qualifying team in 2012 to this point, everything that's happened in between?

BRAD AUSMUS: Well, it's a lot more fun in loanDepot Park. No offense to the Marlins and the Cardinals in Jupiter, but it's a lot more fun in a major league stadium and it's something I recommend and I did recommend to a lot of people.

Q. This was the first game of your four that the Israeli fans were the ones dominating the cheers. How does that affect the players and you?

BRAD AUSMUS: All positive. A lot of them are behind us, but we see them all up on the scoreboard. They're people wearing their Israeli T-shirts and holding their Israeli flag. It may have been the case that in other games they were there, but they were drowned out because there were Dominican fans and Venezuelan fans, but tonight it was a lot more obvious where they were.

(FastScripts by ASAP Sports)