David Lennon: Team USA leaves WBC without gold medal as Venezuela captures title
Aaron Judge of Team USA reacts after striking out in the championship game of the World Baseball Classic against Venezuela on Tuesday in Miami. Credit: AP/Lynne Sladky
MIAMI
This year’s World Baseball Classic was an unprecedented success by nearly every measure.
Team USA? Not so much.
Three hits, two runs and one silver medal. That’s what the U.S. effort amounted to in Tuesday’s night’s 3-2 title game loss to Venezuela, an emotional, highly-motivated squad that displayed the impact of maybe just wanting it more.
Team USA was considered the favorite coming in to this tournament, but they played the role of fall guys in Tuesday’s final, and especially captain Aaron Judge, who went 0-for-4 with three strikeouts.
“I’m always fired up for the Yankees, but I’m still [expletive] about this,” Judge said as headed for the exit — and a return to Tampa for the remainder of spring training. “So I’m looking forward to the next time we get a chance to throw on the red, white and blue and take care of business.”
The U.S. players showed up Tuesday wearing the game-used sweaters of the gold-medal winning hockey team from last month’s Olympic team, but didn’t live up to the wardrobe. Down 2-0 in the eighth, they were four outs away from being kept off the scoreboard entirely before Bryce Harper drilled a tying homer, complete with a massive bat flip and salute to the dugout as he rounded third base.
But Judge killed that momentum by striking out to end the eighth, and Daniel Palencia — the fireballing closer on loan from the Cubs — set down the U.S. in order in the ninth, rifling a 100-mph fastball right by the swinging Roman Anthony to kick off Venezuela’s wild celebration.
“Somebody’s got to lose,” Harper said. “And it happened to us tonight.”
That also made for a very surreal postgame scene, with commissioner Rob Manfred putting the silver medals around the players’ necks — while standing alongside his labor adversary, the new union chief Bruce Meyer, with a lockout looming in another nine months. Only in baseball, right? And many of the players, clearly frustrated by the finish, took off the medals before even getting down the dugout steps.
Venezuela rallied for the go-ahead run in the ninth off Red Sox stellar set-up man Garrett Whitlock. It started with a leadoff walk to Luis Arraez, and pinch-runner Javier Sanoja stole second base — with a safe call that was confirmed on review. Eugenio Suarez then followed with a booming RBI double to leftfield, prompting Venezuela’s frenzied dugout to spill beyond the rail in celebration.
As for Mets’ co-ace Nolan McLean, the first rookie to ever make a start for Team USA, he supplied a solid 4 2/3 innings (4 hits, 4 Ks) but it wasn’t enough. McLean got the U.S. off to a promising start, shaking off a pair of singles through the first two scoreless innings and needing just 18 pitches, but he got burned by a costly wild pitch in the third that set up Maikel Garcia’s sacrifice fly. He retired four straight from that point, then left a 96-mph fastball in the heart of the plate to Wilyer Abreu, who drilled a 414-foot blast to give Venezuela a 2-0 lead. McLean was pulled two flyouts later, having finished with 63 pitches.
“I’m looking forward to going back to the Mets — I miss my buddies,” McLean said. “But at the same time, I hate the way that this ended. And hopefully if I get an opportunity to do it again someday, I definitely will.”
Given the Team USA’s firepower, McLean’s two runs shouldn’t have been fatal. But Judge & Co. never really found their groove in this WBC, scoring a total of seven runs in previous victories over Canada and the Dominican Republic, and that surprising fade worsened Tuesday night.
Judge whiffed twice against Venezuela starter Eduardo Rodriguez, then grounded out as the tying run in the sixth inning vs. former Met Jose Butto. Judge took a 2-0 slider down the middle and also looked at a 3-1 sinker that Butto left up over the plate before bouncing harmlessly to third.
“Getting a chance to be the captain of Team USA, my job was to go out there and bring a championship — bring the gold home,” Judge said. “We didn’t do that. We gave ourselves a shot. We just couldn’t pull it out.”
This WBC featured sky-high expectations and record TV ratings for Team USA, which had a roster that figured to be up to the task. Recruiting Judge and Paul Skenes were major coups for Mark DeRosa, raising the stakes considerably. But the manager found himself under the microscope last week when he suggested his squad had advanced to the quarterfinals when there still remained the very real chance of its elimination on a run-differential rule.
Suddenly, everyone cared. They screamed about the U.S. having a manager unfit for the job as well as a joyless roster that didn’t dance like the Dominicans or sip espresso between swings like the (so-called) Italians.
Two decades ago, the U.S. sent legit superstars to the WBC but couldn’t scrape up enough March attention stateside to compete with an NCAA first-round matchup between Duke and Austin Peay. But no longer.
After the electric opening ceremonies, which featured some dazzling new on-field tech for the player intros — better than the World Series, in our view — McLean got off to an uneven start, which grew worrisome as the zeros began to pile up for Team USA’s stagnant offense. Once the U.S. got this far, it had to finish the job. Back in 2023, DeRosa’s crew lost the title game when Shohei Ohtani, appearing in a closer’s cameo, whiffed Mike Trout to nail down the gold medal. But with the Ohtani out, and the mighty DR gone, there were no excuses for Team USA this time.
And yet, the U.S. players again headed back to their spring training camps empty-handed.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
