The WBC became a spicy meatball last night when Team Italy pulled off a stunning upset of vaunted Team USA, taking down the favorites in a game that went right down to the wire. Cal Raleigh did not play, but Gabe Speier contributed an inning of scoreless relief – although after the USA was already in a hole thanks to early home runs by Kyle Teel, Sam Antonacci, and Jac Caglianone. For Team Italy, Dominic Canzone went 0-for-4 with a walk. Former Mariners Dan Altvailla and Matt Festa both pitched for Team Italy and each gave up a run as the USA tried to claw their way back into this, but Boston\u2019s Greg Weissert came in and shut the door with two massive strikeouts, none bigger than this one:<\/p>\n
Now Team USA\u2019s fate is out of its hands; they will have to wait and see how Italy and Mexico\u2019s game turns out tonight. Here are the scenarios:<\/p>\n
Italy wins: USA advances along with Team Italy to the quarterfinals<\/p>\n
Mexico wins: In any scenario, if Mexico wins, Mexico advances. If Mexico wins but scores four or fewer runs, Team USA is eliminated and Mexico and Italy advance; if Mexico scores five or more runs, Team USA advances along with Mexico. (In regulation, and things get confusing if they score exactly five runs, but we\u2019ll cross that bridge when we come to it.)<\/p>\n
Canada handed Team PR their first loss of the tournament. Josh Naylor went 0-for-4.<\/p>\n
Mariners prospect Charlie Beilenson turned in another solid performance for Team Israel, this time going 1.2 innings in relief and walking two but allowing no runs or hits.<\/p>\n
Cuba vs. Canada, 12 PM PT (FS2, Fox Deportes)<\/p>\n
The winner of this game advances to the quarterfinals. The loser goes home. The tiebreakers (aka who beat or lost to Puerto Rico) mean a Canada win would give them first place in Pool A, whereas a Cuba win would leave Canada out but give Puerto Rico the first seed and Cuba second, to face Italy, Mexico, or the U.S.A..<\/p>\n
Mexico vs. Italy, 4 PM PT (FS1)<\/p>\n
Obviously the game everyone will be watching. The tiebreaker scenarios are, again,\u2026 nutty.<\/p>\n
Venezuela vs. Dominican Republic, 5 PM PT (Tubi)<\/p>\n
It kind of sucks that the USA drama means this game between two undefeated teams – the Latin World Cup – is getting shunted to Tubi as Venezuela and the DR vie for who will win Pool D. It\u2019s still got massive stakes, as the winner gets to face a feisty-but-not-dominant South Korea team, while the loser will take on Japan in their quarterfinals matchup. Get a second screen for this one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The WBC became a spicy meatball last night when Team Italy pulled off a stunning upset of vaunted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":618954,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2392],"tags":[5,620,4,3537,619,65,3235],"class_list":{"0":"post-618953","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-seattle-mariners","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mariners","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-mlb-news","12":"tag-seattle","13":"tag-seattle-mariners","14":"tag-seattlemariners"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116212063984491637","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618953"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618953\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/618954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}