Once again, team USA found another way to win a game in the clutch at the World Baseball Classic. On Wednesday, the Americans rallied from an early lead by team Venezuela before escaping with a 4-2 victory at Petco Park.
Adam Jones hit a game-tying home run in the eighth inning with the United States trailing, 2-1, and his homer was shortly followed by a two-run blast by Eric Hosmer to give the US the lead for good.
Apart from Sunday’s 8-0 blowout over team Canada, each of the Americans’ three games from the tournament have been decided by two runs or less. One of them happens to be a two-run defeat to powerhouse Dominican Republic, which is a team that’s filled with major league standouts similar their opponent this Friday: Puerto Rico.
Unless team USA explodes on offense like it did against the Canucks, the Puerto Ricans will likely take the opportunity to jump on the team early like they’ve thoroughly done so in this year’s installment of the WBC. Which now leads us to…
Betting on Puerto Rico
To say that Puerto Rico’s 3-1 win over the Dominican Republic on Tuesday would be quite an understatement. Not only did the Puerto Ricans avenge their loss to the Dominicans at the 2013 WBC final, they also snapped DR’s unprecedented 11-game win streak at the tournament.
Veteran MLB catcher Yadier Molina brought the best out of his team in the victory. Molina went 2-for-4 with a home run and a couple of RBIs, and he was even more spectacular at making plays and calls behind home plate. He guided Puerto Rico’s pitching unit to a 10-strikeout outing of one-run ball, as well as coming up with a few huge defensive plays to prevent the Dominicans from putting up runs as they normally do.
Both the Americans and Puerto Ricans are playing inspired baseball right now, but this win by the latter basically trumps everything that the good ol’ Red, White and Blue has accomplished thus far in the tournament. With a tide-shifting victory and an extra day of rest, all the intangibles are indeed currently tipped in Puerto Rico’s favor for this Friday’s showdown.
Writer’s Prediction
Puerto Rico remains undefeated through five games in the tournament with a resounding 5-1 win.
