The World Baseball Classic’s hottest team west of Japan continued its roll on Friday. With a 6-5 win against Team USA, Puerto Rico officially punched its ticket to the championship round, where it will join Japan and the Netherlands.
As for the fourth team? That will be determined on Saturday when Team USA meets the Dominican Republic in an already anticipated rematch. The winner of that game will advance to the WBC’s final four, while the loser is eliminated.
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As its done the entire event, Puerto Rico’s offense came out swinging, scoring four runs in the first inning. Team USA starting pitchers entered having not allowed an earned run in four games. That 17 1/3-inning was broken three batters in, and then completely decimated. Each of Puerto Rico’s first six batters reached on hits against Marcus Stroman. A Yadier Molina baserunning blunder gave Stroman his opening to escape, but the damage was done.
To his credit, Stroman bounced back for manager Jim Leyland, lasting into the fifth inning without allowing another run. That gave Team USA’s offense a chance to get back in the game, which it did over the next few innings. Single runs in the second, fifth and sixth innings — the latter on home runs from Buster Posey and Adam Jones respectively — cut the lead to one.
It would never get over that hump in part due to this most recent defensive gem from Javier Baez.
Even bigger was Nolan Arenado’s two-run throwing error in the sixth inning. The four-time Gold Glove winning third baseman did an excellent job to snag the bad hop on Angel Pagan’s grounder, but rushed his throw and skipped it past Eric Hosmer at first base.
Team USA would score two in the ninth inning on Brandon Crawford’s two-out triple, but Edwin Diaz rebounded to strike out Josh Harrison to end it
Team USA caught a break on the Crawford play, as he was clearly tagged out at third base. That was one of several missed calls in the game, but was by far the biggest to go in Team USA’s favor. The team had an on-going battle with home plate-umpire Will Little, who ultimately ejected Andrew McCutchen after a seemingly harmless protest in the fifth inning. That was Little’s second ejection in as many games after tossing Dominican Republic manager Tony Pena earlier this week.
The bulk of the credit definitely goes to Puerto Rico though, which is now 5-0. The way this team is playing right now, opposing teams have to be nearly perfect to have a shot. Team USA was far from it on Friday.
Now the focus turns to Saturday’s rematch with the Dominican Republic. Again, this game will determine the fourth and final team to reach the championship round. The Dominican Republic won the first matchup in dramatic, rallying from a 5-0 deficit to advance in the first round. It’ll be revenge for Team USA, or it will the Dominican Republic a chance to defend its 2013 WBC championship in Los Angeles.
First pitch is set for 10pm ET on MLB Network and MLB.TV.
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Mark Townsend is a writer for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at bigleaguestew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
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