United States manager Mark DeRosa adjusts his cap prior to an exhibition game against the Colorado Rockies on March 4 in Scottsdale, Ariz. (AP photo)

HOUSTON (AP) — Manager Mark DeRosa says his premature comment about the United States having already punched its ticket to the World Baseball Classic quarterfinals before facing Italy was just an “overly confident statement” and reiterated Thursday he knew nothing was guaranteed at that point.

DeRosa had made that remark on MLB Network’s “Hot Stove” before the 8-6 loss to Italy on Tuesday that caused the U.S. to lose control of its WBC fate. The U.S. still advanced to a Friday quarterfinal matchup with Canada thanks to Italy’s 9-1 win over Mexico on Wednesday.

“It’s just an overly confident statement on ‘Hot Stove,’ period, the end,” DeRosa said. “And it’s my fault. I felt good about where we were after Mexico.”

DeRosa also talked about the fresh start the star-studded U.S. team has now that its loss to Italy didn’t prove fatal to its title hopes.

“New lease on life for the boys, certainly,” he said. “I put ourselves in a tough spot. Tip our hat to Vinnie Pasquantino and Italy, truly. Went into that game a little overly confident and got a huge wake-up call.”

DeRosa’s comment prior to the Italy game garnered plenty of scrutiny after that loss, particularly since he had kept usual starters Bryce Harper, Cal Raleigh, Alex Bregman, Brice Turang and Byron Buxton out of his starting lineup. The U.S. needed to beat Italy to guarantee a spot in the quarterfinals. Losing left it subject to a series of tiebreakers, pending the result of Wednesday’s Italy-Mexico game.

He explained those decisions Thursday. DeRosa said he wanted to give starts to Ernie Clement and Paul Goldschmidt because they could end up playing major roles off the bench at some point. He also said he was limited in which pitchers he could use because of “guardrails” set by MLB teams, who typically restrict how much their players throw at the WBC due to injury concerns.

“When I looked at the lineup, I felt confident going in – bottom line,” DeRosa said. “I mean, I also look at it from a player’s perspective. Like, Bryce Harper was struggling a little bit. I know it’s three games, but from the dugout – I played with him for a long time – so it’s like, ‘OK, maybe we get him off his feet a day. We get Goldy in there. We allow (Harper) to work with Sean Casey, Matt Holliday, maybe something clicks. And we get him right back in there and going.'”

DeRosa also had mentioned before Tuesday’s games that some of the U.S. players were “dragging.” The team buses had left later than usual after a Monday night victory over Mexico as players stayed in the locker room celebrating the win.

“Listen, us hanging out in a clubhouse is everything I ever dreamed of creating,” DeRosa said. “You’ve got to buy into this thing super quick and try and create a team. For those players to invite the coaches in and for us to spend time together and enjoy a huge win that we hadn’t had in 20 years was something that, I looked around the room and it was super special to me.

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