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\n Venezuela’s manager successfully negotiated with MLB teams to lift pitcher restrictions during the World Baseball Classic championship game. This allowed closer Daniel Palencia to pitch three times in four days, helping secure Venezuela’s first WBC title with a 3-2 victory over Team USA.\n <\/p>\n
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MIAMI \u2014 The manager of Venezuela\u2019s national baseball team went to extraordinary lengths to secure his country\u2019s first World Baseball Classic championship, successfully challenging restrictions imposed by Major League Baseball organizations.<\/p>\n
MLB franchises typically impose strict guidelines on how their players can be utilized by national team managers during the WBC tournament. Venezuela\u2019s skipper Omar L\u00f3pez managed to convince several MLB front offices to remove their initial player usage constraints, while Team USA manager Mark DeRosa chose to honor such limitations.<\/p>\n
This negotiation proved crucial as it enabled L\u00f3pez to deploy Chicago Cubs reliever Daniel Palencia on consecutive nights and for the third appearance in a four-game span. Palencia struck out three consecutive batters to secure Venezuela\u2019s 3-2 championship victory.<\/p>\n
\u201cI woke this morning, three text messages from different organizations trying not to pitch guys back to back,\u201d L\u00f3pez explained prior to Tuesday\u2019s title game. \u201cOne of my strengths is talk, and I send my text back fighting for my guys and then set a phone call with everybody. When you talk and you get an agreement, you negotiate it, everything is going to go well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Following the successful negotiations, L\u00f3pez expressed relief about his options.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have my guys tonight to go back to back if I need to, and that\u2019s the most important thing,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n
In contrast, DeRosa chose not to utilize Mason Miller, considered among baseball\u2019s elite relievers, due to a commitment made to the San Diego Padres regarding usage only in save opportunities. The 27-year-old right-hander had rested Monday following a 22-pitch performance in Sunday\u2019s ninth inning during a 2-1 victory against the Dominican Republic, where his fastball reached an average of 101 mph.<\/p>\n
Following Bryce Harper\u2019s two-run home run that evened the score at 2-2 in the eighth inning against Venezuela, DeRosa selected Boston\u2019s Garrett Whitlock to begin the ninth frame. Whitlock issued a walk to Luis Arraez, and substitute runner Javier Sanoja successfully stole second base. Sanoja crossed home plate when Eugenio Su\u00e1rez delivered a double to the left-center field gap on a full-count changeup.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonoring the Padres,\u201d DeRosa explained regarding Miller\u2019s absence from the game. \u201cHad we taken the lead, he was coming in, but I wasn\u2019t going to bring him in to a tie game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since Team USA batted in the bottom half of each inning as the designated home team, no save opportunity could materialize once the ninth inning began with the score tied.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted to honor the fact that there was a situation there where, if it was tied, we were going to use Whitlock,\u201d DeRosa said. \u201cWe had talked to the Red Sox about that. And if we had the lead, we were going to use Mason.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 26-year-old right-handed Palencia required only 13 pitches to complete a flawless ninth inning during Saturday\u2019s 8-6 quarterfinal triumph over Japan, recording two strikeouts and concluding the contest by retiring Shohei Ohtani on a fly ball.<\/p>\n
He delivered 15 additional pitches Sunday during a perfect top of the ninth that completed a 4-2 victory against Italy.<\/p>\n
In the championship game against Team USA, Palencia needed merely 11 pitches, bringing his three-game total to 39 throws. He struck out Kyle Schwarber using a 98.5 mph four-seam fastball, generated a popup from pinch-hitter Gunnar Henderson, and delivered a 99.7 mph fastball past Roman Anthony for the championship-clinching strikeout.<\/p>\n
Palencia\u2019s fastball speed averaged 98.1 mph versus Team USA, a decrease from 99.3 mph against Italy and 98.8 mph against Japan, though it remained effective enough for victory.<\/p>\n
Across the three contests, he threw 30 fastballs, seven sliders, and two splitters, achieving 26 strikes against 13 balls.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith that fastball, it is not easy to have good control, but I train that with my coaches in Venezuela,\u201d he commented during the tournament. \u201cI trained like a sprinter because I learned that it is about velocity, the capability of the muscle to move.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Venezuela’s manager successfully negotiated with MLB teams to lift pitcher restrictions during the World Baseball Classic championship game.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[75638,75639,5,75632,75640,75634,75635,75633,75636,4,75637],"class_list":{"0":"post-629954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-102-3","9":"tag-102-3fm","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-fine-day","12":"tag-fine-day-102-3","13":"tag-fine-day-fm","14":"tag-fine-day-media","15":"tag-fine-day-radio","16":"tag-have-a-fine-day","17":"tag-mlb","18":"tag-weller-radio"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116250313647893524","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629954","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=629954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}