After yesterday, we have semifinal matchups that are set. On one side of the bracket, the United States will face off against the Dominican Republic, perhaps the dream matchup of the organizers of the event. On the other side of the bracket, Italy, the tournament darling, will see .
How did we get here? Let’s wrap it up.
Italy 8, Puerto Rico 6
Italy has been the team folks are gravitating towards. Their espresso swilling, Armani wearing offense has scored runs, their pitching staff has prevented them.
Getting out to a huge lead against Puerto Rico again, it looked as though the Italians would boatrace the team Puerto Rican squad. They jumped out to a 4-1 lead in the first inning, chasing Seth Lugo from his start with walks and singles instead of their usual home run barrage. They pushed that lead to 8-2 on back-to-back doubles by Andrew Fischer and J.J. D’Orazio and looked like they might coast to the semifinals.
Then Puerto Rico awoke.
Or, they were brought back into the game by Italy rather. In the top of the eighth, the Italian pitching staff forgot how to pitch and started walking and walking and hitting batters with pitches, all while a few key hits gave Puerto Rico four runs to bring the score to 8-6. However, Greg Weissert came in in the eight and shut the door on that rally and anything else in the ninth inning to give the win to Italy and move them on to their first WBC semifinal.
Venezuela 8, Japan 5
History was made more than once last night. For the first time in WBC history, both teams led off their offensive night with home runs, first from Ronald Acuna,
then by Shohei Ohtani.
From there, Japan’s starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto settled in and held the Venezuelan lineup to a single additional run through four innings. Meanwhile, Samurai Japan got to Ranger Suarez for five runs, chasing him from the game in the third and took a 5-2 lead. Knowing their past, that would see to be enough, but Venezuela kept coming back.
In the fifth inning, Maikel Garcia hit a two-run home run that got them within one before the sixth when Wilyer Abreu came up. He destroyed a baseball with two runners on and gave Venezuela the lead.
They would get another in the eighth to get to the final score, making that final piece of history on the evening as, for the first time in the tournament’s history, Japan will not make it into the semifinal round.
What a baseball game.
