CLEVELAND, Ohio — The Guardians ended their season with a 6-3 loss to Detroit on Thursday during Game 3 of the American League wild card series at Progressive Field.
After the game, Guardians manager Stephen Vogt spoke to reporters about the “sting” of seeing such a wild season come to an end, and what the club can do to improve next season.
Below is a transcript of Vogt’s remarks courtesy of ASAP Sports.
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Q. Vogter, what do you tell the guys after everything you’ve gone through, to close like this.
STEPHEN VOGT: It stinks. It stinks for it to end that way. I couldn’t be more proud of them, of what we accomplished. It’s not enough. We want more. And I think that’s really the message is let this sting. We’re close. We are really close. We’re not quite there yet.
There’s things we need to improve upon. There’s things we need to get better with. But the overarching theme is I’m so proud of that group for not quitting. They have every excuse, every reason thrown at them to quit at any point during this summer and they refused to do that. Even today. They could have easily just given up and stopped fighting and everyone would have understood. But they didn’t. They came right back, made it interesting there at the end.
Again, let it sting, let it hurt, let that fuel you all winter long as you’re working out getting ready for next year because we’re close. But there are things we need to improve to get to where we want to go.
Q. Does it feel different because I think you said it stung last year, of course, when you lost the ALCS. Does this feel different?
STEPHEN VOGT: It stinks when you’re the not the team that wins the last game of the year. It’s our goal. We show up every year to win a World Series. No excuses. Nothing else. That’s our goal. When you come up short, it stinks.
Q. What do you think you have to improve on most as a team?
STEPHEN VOGT: Everything. We need to continue to get better. We can nitpick and we can talk about little things here, little things there. At the end of the day, we just need to execute in all areas of the game. And, like I said, I’m so proud of our guys, but it still stinks.
Q. I imagine it stinks for a lot of those young guys who come to the team relatively in the year. What’s the message knowing now they have something like this to remember and go into next year with?
STEPHEN VOGT: There’s nothing better than postseason baseball. Let that fuel you. That’s why we play. We play to get into the World Series and getting into postseason, you have a chance for that. We came up short. Whether you were here for two days or six and a half, eight months, it’s the same. It’s the same feeling. You want to win. And valuable experience for some of our young guys to get to play in this environment, but we got work to do.
Q. Knowing that there’s turnover and change every off-season, that’s the last time you’ll be in that room with that group of guys, what’s your message to them?
STEPHEN VOGT: It’s hard. You know that that room’s going to look different. That’s the way it looks everywhere. This will be the last time those guys are all in the same room. It’s a cliché, but everybody says it and it’s true. There’s no ending of the season. It doesn’t end gradually. It just halts.
We’ve been with each other every day for eight months. More time with each other than our family. Working together, laughing together, crying together, yelling together. You name it. Now it stops. And I had so much fun with this group. Just their resilience, everything they went through. They didn’t let it faze them.
That’s a special group of human beings in there. A lot of them will be back. Most of them will be back, but it’s inevitable. There’s always turnover. So I love them. I love them.
Q. Can you talk a little bit about the bullpen today and the whole season?
STEPHEN VOGT: They were unbelievable all year. Erik and Hunter have been two of our best, and it’s unfortunate that the inning unfolded the way it did. And when you throw as much as they do, you’re going to have outings, and you just hope it doesn’t come at a time like that.
But I’ve got nothing but respect and faith in those guys because they got us here. Our pitching got us here this year. There’s nothing I can say today negative about the way we threw the baseball.
Q. Cecconi, was that the plan, to kind of let him go, go get him early?
STEPHEN VOGT: We talked through a bunch of scenarios. We had to watch the game, and we had to stop it right there, and we did it at the right time. Timmy did a great job getting out of that jam. Joey was outstanding. Joey was outstanding. One change-up he left up in the zone, and they didn’t miss it.
But, yeah, you go into the game with a plan. It went semi close to what we talked about, but you’re still watching the game and seeing how it’s going.