For the past two weeks, the passion of the World Baseball Classic has been on full display. There was the indefatigable cheer squad for Chinese Taipei; Joey Meneses’s epic bat toss after homering for Mexico; Italy pitcher Joe LaSorsa’s ear-splitting paroxysm after getting a clutch out; and dueling Nicaraguan and Puerto Rican street bands in […]
On top of all those strange new rules, there’s another twist to baseball this March: the return of the World Baseball Classic, the always-entertaining tournament that is essentially baseball’s equivalent of the World Cup. (The rules are similar, too, with a 20-team group stage followed by an eight-team knockout round.) Thanks to the pandemic, it […]
Team USA finally did it. Buoyed by a tremendous pitching performance from starter Marcus Stroman — who carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning — the United States routed Puerto Rico 8-0 in Wednesday night’s title game of the World Baseball Classic, securing America’s first-ever championship at the event. Going from mediocre (they went into […]
Team USA finally did it. Buoyed by a tremendous pitching performance from starter Marcus Stroman — who carried a no-hitter into the seventh inning — the United States routed Puerto Rico 8-0 in Wednesday night’s title game of the World Baseball Classic, securing America’s first-ever championship at the event. Going from mediocre (they went into […]
Before the United States began its World Baseball Classic run a couple weeks ago, I wrote about how downright mediocre the team’s track record had been at the event. Things have changed! Going into 2017, the U.S. was 10-10 in three WBC appearances, with a below-average run differential after accounting for its strength of schedule. […]
