World Baseball Classic Day 5: Cuba, Italy win the numbers game

World Baseball Classic: United States 6, Great Britain 2

The long-awaited debut of Team USA in the World Baseball Classic unfolded with workmanlike efficiency Saturday in Phoenix. Riding certified stars Kyle Schwarber and Nolan Arenado, Team USA dispatched a game but overmatched Great Britain 6-2.

To the extent there was any drama in the Team USA opener, it developed out of the reality that the Group C hosts did not lead from the very start. Great Britain’s best-known player, Dodger outfielder Trayce Thompson, eliminated that possibility with a home run off Adam Wainwright as the game’s second batter.

Former major league pitcher Vance Worley managed to make Thompson’s homer stand up for all of two innings before the inevitable transpired. Then in the third, Arenado’s double scored Cardinal teammate Paul Goldschmidt with the tying run, and Kyle Tucker singled Arenado home to put Team USA ahead 2-1.

One inning later, Schwarber injected a dose of baseball reality into Great Britain’s hopes with a three-run bomb directed toward the swimming pool beyond Chase Field’s right-center field fence. That was more than enough for the staff of four Team USA pitchers assigned by manager Mark DeRosa to hold the lead.

Although Schwarber delivered the biggest knock, Arenado proved to be the biggest Team USA thorn against the Brits. Aside from his second-inning RBI hit, he also singled in the first and doubled Goldschmidt home with the final Team USA run in the sixth.

Wainwright, Rays reliever Jason Adam, Rockies starter Kyle Freeland and Pirates closer David Bednar combined to hold Britain to eight hits, striking out 10.

World Baseball Classic: Colombia 5, Mexico 4 (10 innings)

This certainly wasn’t the way Luis Urias envisioned his World Baseball Classic to begin.

The Milwaukee Brewers infielder fumbled Gustavo Campero’s two-out 10th-inning grounder, allowing Jorge Alfaro to score the go-ahead run in Colombia’s extra-inning victory. Alfaro, who was placed on second base via the tournament’s extra inning rule, had advanced to third on Reynaldo Rodriguez’ infield single.

Mexico squandered its own 10th-inning chance to at least tie after Alex Verdugo was placed at second. Joey Meneses struck out, Rowdy Tellez flied out, and Isaac Paredes was called out on a third strike breaking ball from Guillermo Zuniga that appeared to dive low and outside.

Although only the first game of Group C play in Phoenix, it might prove to be a pivotal one. Both Mexico and Colombia are perceived to be behind the U.S. but superior to Great Britain and Canada, the group’s other two teams. If those forecasts prove prescient, the victory could be decisive in moving Colombia ahead of Mexico when group play concludes next week.

The game was tightly played from the start. A Paredes base hit brought Meneses home with the game’s first run  in the fourth, but an Elias Diaz double and a Reynaldo Rodriguez home run gave Colombia three runs in the top of the fifth.

Randy Arozarena’s home run in the inning’s bottom half immediately re-tied the game, and both teams added a run in the seventh.

World Baseball Classic: Puerto Rico 9, Nicaragua 1

Puerto Rico laid down its marker in the challenging Miami-based Group D with a decisive opening victory.

One key was the performance of a half-dozen Puerto Rico pitchers led by Cubs starter Marcus Stroman. He pitched four and two-thirds innings of two-hit ball, and his successors surrendered only two more hits while walking just one.

Francisco Lindor had two hits, and one of those (a too-hot-to-handle grounder to first) ignited a five-run Puerto Rico fifth inning that broke a 1-1 tie. Royals outfielder M. J. Melendez, Diamondbacks infield prospect Emmanuel Rivera, and Twins catcher Christian Vazquez each drove in two runs for the winners.

Brewers prospect Carlos Rodriguez gave Nicaragua four strong innings, allowing just one run. But the Puerto Ricans lit up his successor, Angels reliever J.C. Ramirez, for three hits and a walk in that five-run fifth. Ramirez retired only one batter.

The winners added three insurance runs in the seventh, two of them coming home on Vazquez’s base hit.

White Sox farmhand Nicholas Padilla faced only one batter taking over for Stroman with two outs in the fourth. He got Alex Blandino on an infield grounder, and picked up the victory as the pitcher of record when his teammates posted that five-run fifth.

World Baseball Classic: Venezuela 5, Dominican Republic 1

This was expected to be a knock-down drag-out between a pair of Group D powers in Miami, but five Venezuela pitchers dominated the star-laden Dominican lineup, holding them to six base hits. Two of those came to the Dominican’s first two hitters, Juan Soto’s double scoring Julio Rodriguez, who had singled.

The remainder of the Dominican offense amounted to four base hits offset by 15 strikeouts, three of them by Rodriguez.

Rangers starter Martin Perez made the start and allowed four of those six hits in 3.1 innings. Astros starter Luis Garcia was the most impressive of the Venezuelan moundsmen. He completed three hitless innings and struck out seven of the Dominicans.

The dominance of the Venezuelan arms put the game on cruise control. Dodger outfielder David Peralta was the hitting star with two hits and a walk. His fourth-inning bases-loaded single to right scored Gleyber Torres and Salvador Perez to break a 1-1 tie, and had the happy byproduct of knocking Dominican starter Sandy Alcantara out of the game. Peralta’s sixth inning double scored Eugenio Suarez with the game’s final run.

Orioles regular Anthony Santander homered off Alcantara in the second inning to tie the game.

World Baseball Classic: Japan 7, Australia 1

The Aussies entered this game with a chance to clinch advancement with a victory. The only problem was they were playing Japan, so forget it.

The powerhouse Group B hosts did what they’ve done the entire Group stage, steamroll the unfortunate opponent.

For its four games to date, the Japanese have run up a 38-8 run differential.

The offensive star this time was catcher Yuhei Nakamura, who plays in the Japanese major league. He had three of his team’s nine base hits, scoring once and driving in a run.

Shohei Ohtani limited his impact to a first-inning three-run home run that followed a walk to Lars Nootbaar and a Kensuke Kondoh base hit.

Nootbaar and Kondoh both hit safely to drive home second inning runs and giving Japan a 5-0 advantage before five outs had been recorded.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto started and gave Japan four one-hit innings, striking out eight Australian opponents. Four Japanese pitchers recorded 13 strikeouts for the game.

Red Sox free agent signee Masataka Yoshida had his first off night, not that his efforts were needed. Yoshida was hitless in four tries, although that game-long slump merely lowered Yoshida’s tournament batting average to .417.

Cardinal outfielder Nootbaar was one-for-three, scoring twice and driving in one run. Nootbaar is batting .429, although that’s only third on the team behind Ohtani (.500) and Kondoh (.467).

World Baseball Classic: Korea 7, Czech Republic 3

Korea’s victory dealt a blow (although not a fatal one) to the Czech Republic’s hopes of being the biggest underdog to advance to second round play. With a 1-2 record, the Czechs (a team composed largely of amateurs) now must win their late Sunday night game against Australia and hope for a break in run differential to earn the second ticket out of the Tokyo Group B bracket.

For the first time in the tournament, the Koreans played the way many expected them to play from the start, with a degree of dominance capable of challenging Japan for group supremacy.  That dominance began with a five-run explosion in the bottom of the first that took all the drama out of this game.

Korea hit the Czechs with a five-hit, one-walk haymaker in that first, the key being Tommy Edman’s base hit that drove in two teammates.

But from a muscle standpoint, Padres infielder Ha-Seong Kim provided the highlights. Kim homered in the second inning, then did it again in the seventh.

Se Woong Park, a veteran of the Korea Baseball Organization, started for Korea and held the Czechs scoreless on one hit until the pitch count got him two outs into the fifth inning.

For the game, six Korean pitchers combined to hold the Czech Republic to six hits.

World Baseball Classic: Cuba 7, Chinese Taipei 1

The Cubans, a tournament-long disappointment, managed to advance as the Group’s champion by holding hosts to that single run at Taichung. That gave Cuba, which opened play with two losses, the best ratio of runs allowed to innings played.

By extension, it also made the five Cuban pitchers, none of whom worked three innings, the heroes. Collectively they held Taipei to just four hits, striking out 12.

Cuba scored six of its seven runs in the first two innings.

White Sox star Yoan Moncada finally got his act together. Moncada, who was having a bad tournament both at the plate and defensively, lined a one-out ground rule double in the first and came home with White Sox teammate Luis Robert on Alfredo Despaigne’s double.

He homered in the second to add a sixth run to the five Cuba ended up posting in the first, then capped off his performance with a seventh inning infield pop that fell.

The host team thus blew its chance to emerge with the group’s only 3-1 record. Instead, they were left to the tender mercies of the tie-breaker formula, which dropped Taipei all the way to last place. The dozen runs they allowed in a tournament-opening loss to Panama ended up being the fatal blow to Chinese Taipei’s hopes.

Coming up at the World Baseball Classic

Group A play concluded with Italy’s upset of Netherlands, creating the aforementioned five-way tie and sending everybody to their calculators to anoint Cuba and Italy.

In Group B, Japan finished with a perfect 4-0 record, but the identity of the second team advancing out of Tokyo won’t be known until Australia and the Czech Republic play Sunday night U.S. time.

If Australia wins, they advance to meet Cuba, with Japan already slated against Italy. But if the Czechs win, it would create a three-way tiebreaker, with Korea being the third team. The issue would again boil down to the best ratio of runs allowed to outs recorded. Pending the results of those final two games, that math favors Australia, but not by a decisive margin.

Otherwise, action Sunday shifts largely to the two North America group sites: Phoenix and Miami.

Israel, a cult favorite from the 2017 WBC, will debut in Group D play in Miami against Nicaragua. While the Dominicans try to recover from their loss to Venezuela, the two group favorites (Venezuela and Puerto Rico) will meet with the winner gaining a big advantage.

In Phoenix, the U.S. team will play Mexico and Great Britain will take on Canada in a battle of Group C underdogs.

You can check out the entire schedule here.