{"id":624712,"date":"2026-03-15T07:30:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T07:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/624712\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T07:30:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T07:30:26","slug":"team-usa-needs-to-live-up-to-its-wbc-hype","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/624712\/","title":{"rendered":"Team USA needs to live up to its WBC hype"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u2014 Team USA advanced from pool play and the preliminaries of this World Baseball Classic, thanks to a couple of overmatched opponents and the clutch, caffeinated Italians<\/a>. But it\u2019s finally time to get serious. USA\u2019s semifinal opponent Sunday \u2014 the Dominican Republic \u2014 is just as formidable, in much better form and seemingly having much more fun.<\/p>\n

USA barely escaped rounds originally seen as warmups and finally finds itself facing a powerful foe, a club stocked with major league stars, not a collection of mostly hopefuls and has-beens. Yes, it\u2019s time now for Team USA\u2019s band of All-Stars and future Hall of Famers to perform close to their reputation and r\u00e9sum\u00e9s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

USA, the pre-tournament favorite, should no longer be seen as such after three straight unremarkable performances in games that were supposed to be walkovers. Team D.R., meantime, which dismantled comparable or better opponents<\/a>, presents a step up in class akin to moving from a $10,000 maiden claiming race to the highest of stakes.<\/p>\n

In what might serve as the understatement of the event, Team USA superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. said this to writers after they barely advanced with a nail-biter of a 5-3 victory<\/a> over Team Canada\u2019s group of aspiring rookies, reclamation projects and even a couple of retirees: \u201cI still think we haven\u2019t played our best ball yet.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Team USA advanced from pool play and the preliminaries of this World Baseball Classic, thanks to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":624713,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,4,185,430,428,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-624712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-sports-columnists","12":"tag-sports-plus","13":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116232023223248263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624712","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=624712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/624713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=624712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=624712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=624712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}