Big Picture: Team USA’s Offense Had Star Power But No Spark In WBC Defeat

LoanDepot Park (Miami) – Team USA players stood on the top step of the dugout with their arms thrown over the railing in defeat. They were motionless as they watched a sea of Venezuelan players in royal blue jerseys dogpile on the field and celebrate their 3-2 win and first World Baseball Classic title. Luis Arraez wore a Venezuelan flag draped over his shoulders and could not stop crying. Eugenio Suarez dropped to his knees, raised his arms and looked up at the sky. Daniel Palencia tossed his glove in the air, pounded his chest and fell down in disbelief. In the USA dugout, Kyle Schwarber didn’t say a word, but he was shooting daggers. Aaron Judge looked like he didn’t know what to do with himself, or what to do next. Bobby Witt Jr. turned around. He'd seen enough. Their disappointment in losing was incontestable. Their underwhelming offense was the culprit. That was supposed to be Team USA celebrating the WBC title. Not Venezuela, not anyone else. "It hurts," Schwarber said in the tunnel outside the USA’s home clubhouse. "You expect to win a baseball game when you walk out of the room. That’s just how you operate. Not to have that happen, it hurts. But give credit to Venezuela. Tip your cap to them. They played a great ballgame today. There are no ifs, ands, or buts. They beat us, and they deserved it." The scenes of unbridled elation in front of a raucous crowd on Tuesday night were supposed to be covered in red, white and blue. The national anthem that blared from the stadium speakers was supposed to be the Star-Spangled Banner. That was how Team USA envisioned this would all go when it came together and rostered the most star-studded club this tournament had ever seen. There were multi-time MVPs and Cy Young winners. There were future Hall of Famers. There were more All-Stars on Team USA than any other country in the 20-team tournament. It was a dream team. The absurd level of talent on the American roster should’ve been enough to win the WBC title for the first time since 2017. "Hats off to Venezuela for playing a great ballgame and coming away with the win," Judge said, emerging from the clubhouse nearly two hours after the final out. "But obviously disappointed. We came here, all of us put on this uniform, signed up to go out there and get a gold medal. We fell short of that." They fell short because the biggest bats went quiet when it mattered most. In the championship game, the USA lineup went 3-for-30 and struck out 10 times against six pitchers. Judge went 0-for-4, whiffing three times. Schwarber and Witt each worked a walk, but combined to go 0-for-6. Just once, they all spilled onto the field and lined up for high-fives, after Bryce Harper hit a game-tying two-run home run in the eighth inning. He was the only American batter to record an extra-base hit. All that star power, and still no spark. "They made their pitches," Judge said. "They were working the corners on both sides. When we did get a pitch, we either popped it up or hit it on the ground. Stuff like that can’t happen. When you get a pitch to hit, even if you get one pitch in the game, you gotta do something on it. So they just went out there and executed their pitches and their game plan, and we couldn’t get anything going offensively." Venezuela’s starter, left-hander Eduardo Rodriguez, held what was supposed to be a menacing USA lineup to 4 ⅓ shutout innings. He allowed one hit: an 89 mph single to the No. 8 hitter, Brice Turang. Rodriguez has one of the worst changeups in the major leagues, according to Baseball Savant’s offspeed run value metric. USA players, including Judge, still swung wildly at it all night. As much as Harper claimed that Rodriguez "threw the ball awesome" on Tuesday, his fastball sat at 92–93 mph with little movement. Rodriguez gave Judge a couple of pitches to hit in his second at-bat, most memorably throwing him a 3-1 fastball down the middle that the three-time MVP missed. It was a continuation of their confrontations in the big leagues. Judge is hitting just .152 with one home run in 41 career plate appearances against Rodriguez. "We both kind of looked at each other like, usually you don’t miss that one," Judge said of the gift-pitch from Rodriguez. "So I fouled it off. Then I got a slider there late. Those are two pitches you wish you could have back and do something different, but that’s baseball." After the loss, in his final press conference before heading back to MLB Network to resume his job as a studio analyst, Team USA manager Mark DeRosa said, "Rodriguez has been a darn good pitcher in the league for a long time." Not lately. Since the 2024 season, Rodriguez has recorded a 5.02 ERA in 39 starts and 204 innings for the Arizona Diamondbacks. Even though he was once upon a time a solid starter, now on the cusp of his 11th big-league season, Rodriguez is no longer elite. The Americans were missing the 2023 WBC version of Trea Turner, a key hitter who got hot and carried the team for an extended stretch. It pointed to a bigger issue. Throughout the tournament, USA’s lineup never really got going. Through seven games in the WBC, Team USA ranked sixth in batting average (.250) and seventh in slugging (.428). And it wasn’t even close. Italy outslugged the USA by nearly 90 points. This was a USA lineup that featured a big-name slugger in Cal Raleigh, who led baseball with 60 home runs last season, and dynamic or experienced hitters up and down the lineup. Raleigh went 0-for-9 in the WBC. Witt put on a show on defense, but he was inconsistent at the plate. Byron Buxton went 0-for-7. Alex Bregman batted .143. Will Smith had one extra-base hit in 13 at-bats. Gunnar Henderson, who led USA with a 1.267 OPS in the WBC, was left on the bench against Venezuela, only to appear as a pinch-hitter in the ninth inning. By then, Team USA was two outs away from accepting silver medals for the second consecutive WBC. DeRosa, after Sunday's semifinal win over the Dominican Republic, said he was "still waiting for the offense to explode." He'll have to wait a while longer. The next WBC is expected to take place in 2030. That's a lot of time to think about what went wrong. While Venezuela played loose and capitalized with timely hitting the entire tournament, the United States looked tense in the box and missed their chances. Maybe it was the single-game stakes. Maybe it was the pressure to win. But their timing was off, and they didn’t execute when they needed to, when they were expected to. "I thought we played great," Harper said standing outside the USA’s clubhouse. "Obviously, we didn’t win. We got beat tonight. It’s part of the game. It’s kind of what happens." Sure, but it wasn’t supposed to happen to this star-studded team. Even Australia, in a smaller sample size of four games, walked away from the WBC with a higher slugging percentage. The USA built a power-heavy roster that never truly arrived. Next time, they'll have to rethink how to construct their lineup. They'll have to inject more contact hitters and table setters, and make smarter decisions from the manager's seat, particularly when it comes to lineup decisions and understanding clinch scenarios. So now players will rejoin their MLB teams and get ready for the season. Opening Day is in one week. Soon they'll get to turn the page and play 162. But, as far as back-to-back second-place finishes in the WBC? This one will sting for a while. "I’m always fired up for the Yankees, but I’m still pissed about this," Judge said. "I’m looking forward to the next time we get a chance to throw on the red, white and blue and take care of business." 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