After a full day of action from the World Baseball Classic, it would be tough to blame someone for seeing the final out recorded between Venezuela and Mexico and heading straight to bed. Turns out things have changed and Mexico will not be playing in a tiebreaker game later today after all.
A few days ago I wrote a piece declaring that team Mexico was “done” after their initial loss in the tournament, going over the tough road that they would have to travel to even get so far as a tiebreaker game. While it’s nice to be right on a technicality, kudos to Mexico for making it so darn close in the first place.
First, the basics. Mexico beat Venezuela 11-9 on Sunday night/Monday morning and thought that they were headed to a tiebreaker when they left the field of play. Mexico, Venezuela and Italy had all tied with a 1-2 record, but with some of the World Baseball Classic’s funky rules, one team would be eliminated outright from this trio, while the other two played one more game in an attempt to advance.
I'm still super confused. Was this graphic wrong? And was this what everyone was going off? pic.twitter.com/WJgeR4J1nm
— Kenny Ducey (@KennyDucey) March 13, 2017
This is the graphic that everyone was going off of, and for the most part it makes perfect mathematical sense. The problem with math is, if one number is messed up, it screws up the final answer.
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So what happened?
Turns out that in that game that spawned my “Mexico is Done” piece, they failed to record an out in the ninth inning, and they were being credited for a full inning’s work in the graphic above. If Roberto Osuna or Oliver Perez had recorded a single out in that huge come from behind win from Italy, then Mexico would be in the tiebreaker game instead of Venezuela.
Needless to say, some of the players were not happy with this new information.
Nos avisaron antes del juego que si ganamos por 2, pasábamos.
— Adrián González OLY (@Adrian_ElTitan) March 13, 2017
We were told before the game if we win by two, we play tomorrow.
There was some debate over whether or not the rule is clear enough when it comes to these partial innings, and whether or not it should be Mexico that ends up advancing. Given that they won the head-to-head match-up, they had a decent argument for such a close call.
In the end, the better overall team that has a legit shot at winning the whole WBC tournament gets one more shot at advancing, but Mexico has every right to be fuming over this final decision.