Two very different games took place on Friday in WBC quarterfinals action.<\/p>\n
Dominican Republic 10, Korea 0. Well, this was a slaughter nearly from the get-go. I intended to watch it all and turned it off early because it was just kind of depressing. Hyun-Jin Ryu had a perfect first, but the murders began in the second, as a three-spot (two walks, three hits, some not-so-great defensive play from Korea) chased him from the game. Things only got worse for Korea from there, as the D.R. piled on with a four-run third that involved two walks with the bases loaded after a smattering of additional hits. Austin Wells\u2019 three-run homer mercy-ruled the game in the seventh, functioning as a weird walkoff.<\/p>\n
The D.R. only used two pitchers, which will help them a lot going into the semis. Cristopher Sanchez dominated with an 8\/1 K\/BB ratio in five frames; Albert Abreu struck out three in two frames that were only marred by an error behind him. Korea\u2019s first three pitchers were not quite up to the challenge of the stacked Dominican lineup, with just a 3\/2 K\/BB ratio while getting just seven outs and getting charged with seven runs in the process, though, as noted, the defense wasn\u2019t exactly standout behind them, either. Junior Caminero had a perfect night (2-for-2 with a double and a walk) while opening the scoring in the second.<\/p>\n
USA 5, Canada 3. This game looked like it was going to be a blowout, but then it wasn\u2019t, and the U.S. kinda survived moreso than thrived after an early outburst. Eternal favorite Michael Soroka got the start but was overpowered by the U.S. lineup: leadoff walk, near-homer for an out, destroyed double, and RBI groundout opened the scoring. Canada got a couple on against Logan Webb in an attempt to respond, but Webb struck out Owen Caissie and Abraham Toro to preserve his team\u2019s lead.<\/p>\n
Soroka would\u2019ve survived the third in scoreless fashion, but Kyle Schwarber\u2019s soft roller was soft enough for even Schwarber to reach first safely, and then Toro threw away a Bregman grounder that could\u2019ve ended the inning, allowing two to score. The pitching then dominated on both sides until the bottom of the fifth, when the U.S. strung together a few walks and singles into two more runs. Canada then threw up a three-spot with a one-out walk, a two-out single, and Bo Naylor popping a three-run homer off Braves trade legend Gabe Speier.<\/p>\n
David Bednar came on for the seventh, which ended up being the pivotal frame. A couple of infield singles and a passed ball put the tying runs in scoring position with none out\u2026 but Bednar got a pop-out and then struck out Tyler O\u2019Neill and Caissie to keep it 5-3. Nothing much happened after that; Mason Miller eviscerated Canada\u2019s last hope in the tournament by striking out the side, including an emphatic three-pitch carve-up of Otto Lopez to end the game.<\/p>\n
Logan Webb did his Logan Webb thing with a 5\/1 K\/BB ratio over 4 2\/3. Overall, U.S. pitching posted an 11\/2 K\/BB ratio. Canada\u2019s struggles on the pitching end were mostly from Soroka and Philippe Aumont, as the other three arms held the U.S. lineup at bay with a 6\/2 K\/BB ratio; unfortunately, Soroka and Aumont combined for a 1\/3 K\/BB ratio and were charged with all of the runs (though, as noted, Toro\u2019s error was a big blow behind Soroka).<\/p>\n
The U.S. and D.R. will now face off in the semifinals. Meanwhile, today\u2019s action includes the other quarterfinal slate, with Puerto Rico-Italy and Venezuela-Japan on tap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two very different games took place on Friday in WBC quarterfinals action. Dominican Republic 10, Korea 0. Well,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2394],"tags":[191,46,73299,4166,5,192,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-623629","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-atlanta-braves","8":"tag-atlanta","9":"tag-atlanta-braves","10":"tag-atlanta-braves-discussion","11":"tag-atlantabraves","12":"tag-baseball","13":"tag-braves","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116228371528025967","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623629","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=623629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}