Despite entering the World Baseball Classic as one of the heavy favorites to win the tournament, Team USA suddenly found itself facing possible elimination in the group stage after Tuesday’s shocking 8-6 loss to Italy.
And much of that scrutiny is falling on the pregame comments from manager Mark DeRosa. The remarks were so embarrassing that MLB Network — where DeRosa works as an analyst during the MLB season — initially tried to take down the video.
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Ahead of Tuesday’s game, DeRosa joined MLB Network for an interview to talk about his approach for facing Italy. He incorrectly said that the U.S. had already clinched a spot in the quarterfinal and discussed giving bench players like Paul Goldschmidt and Gunnar Henderson a start. He claimed after the game that he misspoke and miscalculated.
After the loss, the comments started to make waves, and MLB Network took down the video, according to The Athletic. The video wasn’t restored until after MLB was asked about its removal. A trimmed video was posted on the Facebook page that excluded the blunder as well.
The league initially took down DeRosa’s mistaken comments from MLB.com, with attempts by The Athletic to access it yielding error messages early Wednesday morning. MLB later later restored the video amidst public pressure. A version of the interview that remained on MLB Network’s Facebook page appeared to be condensed and did not include the now-scrutinized remarks.
The problem was obvious as DeRosa’s miscalculation led to him sitting star players like Cal Raleigh, Bobby Witt Jr. and Bryce Harper. And by taking the video down, MLB Network was basically running cover for an employee after an inexcusable error.
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As it stands, the tiebreak scenarios for Team USA look like this:
DeRosa just never studied that chart, it seems.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: MLB Network tried to hide Mark DeRosa’s embarrassing WBC blunder