Pedro Martinez had his first sitdown with the media today after a session of long toss on one of the back fields. He spoke for almost 20 minutes and addressed a wide range of topics, from his own health to the team's collapse to the steroids mess. Here's what Martinez had to say about the Mets' disastrous finish and how they must use that anger to fuel them this season.
"I wouldn't say choke," Martinez said. "I think that all of [the players] know how to win. I don’t think that they were afraid. You could call it lack of concentration, fatigue, something like that. But this year we have to get our mindset to actually be better prepared to face the whole season, not just the first part or three-quarters of the season. We have to get ready for the whole season and the whole season includes those 15 or 20 games left in the season. That’s where we probably failed. We failed because we got tired and at the end of the year we didn’t know how to mentally prepare to face those 20 days."
As for the importance of remembering that embarrassment, Martinez added:
"You don’t want to hold onto it in a bad way. If you’re a proud player, if you’re a player that’s used to winning, that’s not a proper way to lose and I’m not very happy with the way we lost. I’m not saying it was lack of effort. I’m not saying it was anything that we should regret because we didn’t do what we could possibly do.
"It’s because I’m not used to it. I was born a winner and I’m going to go down as a winner. That’s not the way I want to go down. We have to make up for that one – somehow, some time this year."