MIAMI — Dare I be bold enough to declare that the Team USA offense in the World Baseball Classic has been a bit disappointing?
On the surface level, and if you haven’t watched the games and only look at numbers, you could easily call me crazy.
Team USA through six games in the WBC is hitting .272/.393/.461 while averaging seven runs per game. That’s robust. Let’s look deeper, though, at all the context.
- USA started off with 15 runs against Brazil, thanks in large part to being gifted 17 walks. Seven of those runs came in the ninth inning when Brazil was out of decent pitching.
- USA scored nine runs against Great Britain, but had zero through four innings. The middle-innings rally was cool, though.
- Home runs are great, especially when there are runners on base. Against Mexico, USA got a two-run homer and a three-run homer in the same inning. Those were the only runs scored all game, though. There was a five-spot and then seven innings with zero runs.
- In the loss to Italy, USA scored six runs, but didn’t start scoring until Italy had an 8-0 lead. Zero runs were scored in the first five innings.
- Five runs on eight hits against the pitchers Canada used could be described as adequate.
- Two runs on two solo homers against the Dominican Republic won the game, but it was far from overwhelming, offensively.
Team USA Baseball vs. Venezuela: Expert predictions for the World Baseball Classic finals
Kate Feldman
Bear in mind, some of the lesser competition in pool play can mean big stat lines. That USA slash line I listed above looks, as I reported, robust. In the tournament overall, though, USA ranks fifth in batting average and sixth in slugging percentage.
This is a team with Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, Kyle Schwarber and on and on we could go. And yet the team is slugging at a lower clip than five other teams, including Italy. It’s not even close, actually. Who had Italy outslugging USA by 120 points heading into the WBC?
Roman Anthony, Pete Crow-Armstrong and Gunnar Henderson are the top three in OPS. They’ve been great. Brice Turang has been good. Schwarber has been great, too, and Judge has overall been fine.
So who are the culprits? Some of the big names. Raleigh is 0 for 9 with five strikeouts. Bryce Harper is 4 for 24 (.167) with a .208 slugging percentage.
More than anything, though, USA has had trouble stringing hits together and then getting the big, multi-run home run, other than those two against Mexico. They’ve gotten on base at a high clip; it’s the slugging in big spots that isn’t coming through as much as many of us thought it would.
Of course, it’s only six games. This entire event deals in small sample sizes. Fluky things can happen. There’s been good pitching and defense in spots, too, of course.
On the whole, though, I still firmly believe it’s fair to say the USA offense has underwhelmed, even if slightly. USA manager Mark DeRosa seems to agree.
“I’m still waiting for our offense to explode,” he reported after Sunday’s win over the Dominican Republic.
There’s a beast lurking underneath this lineup, ready to pounce. It has a chance to do just that in the finals of the World Baseball Classic Tuesday night in Miami against Venezuela.
