Eight teams remain, and it’s single elimination turtles all the way down from here.
It’s probably not Korea, who did juuuust enough to move on from pool play. Nonetheless, Bo Gyeong Moon was on fire for four games.
Could it be the D.R.? We knew that lineup was stacked, and it lived up to expectations.
Team USA was the “favorite” but they’ve been favored a lot and only won one of the previous WBCs. There’s also whatever Mark DeRosa is doing that just keeps getting weirder the longer a camera is on him,
and the fact that the pitching got hammered by Italy.
It’s also probably not Canada, who had to beat Cuba to make it there. But, if you like underdogs…
Puerto Rico lost to Canada but won its other contests, yet never in the sort of blowout, talent mismatch way that some of the other remaining teams have managed. On the flip side, their pitching didn’t get fileted like some of the other pitching staffs in the tournament, but they haven’t had to face one of the juggernaut lineups yet, either…
…but they do when they have to play Italy. Sorta. I mean no one really expected Italy to have a juggernaut lineup, but they scored at least eight runs in each of the four games they played. (The U.S., by comparison, scored five once and six once.) They’ve also hit a lot of homers, and you know about homers. The pitching is kind of a mixed bag, but that’s true of everyone. I make fun of their eligibility criteria, but this is the most legitimately fun team of the tournament at this point. Doesn’t mean they’re gonna win, though.
Venezuela also looked unstoppable until they couldn’t quite keep up slugging-wise with the D.R. (though they almost did). Unfortunately…
…they have to play Japan first, and betting against Japan in the WBC has not been a profitable enterprise. It’s a roster that doesn’t seem to have much of an overt weakness and has a ton of overt strengths (both literally and figuratively).
