Team USA moved into the World Baseball Classic championship game Sunday night with a 2-1 win over the Dominican Republic at Loan Depot park in Miami, using strong pitching and timely power to slow one of the tournament’s most productive lineups. The victory sends the United States into Tuesday’s final, where it will face the winner of Monday’s semifinal between Italy and Venezuela.
The semifinal turned on a pair of American home runs and a steady relief effort behind starter Paul Skenes. The Dominican Republic struck first in the second inning when Junior Caminero hit a 401-foot solo home run, his tournament-leading 15th homer for the Dominican side. Team USA answered in the fourth, when Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony homered to put the Americans ahead 2-1. Anthony’s blast gave the United States its first lead of the night, and it held up as the decisive run.
Skenes set the tone on the mound by allowing only the Caminero home run in 4⅓ innings. After he exited, the American bullpen kept the Dominican lineup from breaking through. Tyler Rogers relieved Skenes in the fifth inning and got Juan Soto to bounce into an inning-ending double play. In the seventh, David Bednar escaped a two-on, one-out jam by striking out Fernando Tatis Jr. and Ketel Marte. Mason Miller then closed the game out in the ninth.
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The game’s final sequence brought immediate attention. Julio Rodríguez walked with two outs in the ninth, advanced to second on a passed ball and reached third on a groundout. Geraldo Perdomo then worked the count full and fouled off consecutive 101 mph fastballs from Miller before a low slider was called strike three by plate umpire Cory Blaser. With Perdomo retired, the game ended and Tatis, who was due up next, never came to the plate.
Perdomo said afterward, “One-hundred-percent a ball. It’s all right. It’s baseball.” Dominican manager Albert Pujols did not center his postgame comments on the final pitch. “I’m not going to focus on that last pitch,” Pujols said in Spanish. “This has been a tremendous game between two tremendous teams. I feel incredibly grateful for the guys who represented us in this Classic. Once more, we raised our flag high in this Classic and left our mark, and I think our country is very proud.”
The matchup lived up to its billing for much of the night. The U.S. and Dominican Republic rosters featured 25 players ranked within ESPN’s Top 100, and the semifinal lineups combined for 56 All-Star selections, 31 Silver Sluggers, nine Gold Gloves, five MVP awards and one Cy Young Award. That talent showed up on both sides in the field as well. Aaron Judge threw out Tatis trying to stretch a single in the third inning, Bobby Witt Jr. made a standout defensive play on Manny Machado in the sixth, and Rodríguez robbed Judge of a potential home run in the fifth by leaping at the center-field wall.
Judge said, “That’s what you dream about as a kid — getting a chance to be in that moment, be in front of these fans. That was definitely special. I think you ask any guy in this clubhouse, on both sides, it was definitely a special game tonight.” The result gives Team USA a chance to play for another WBC title after eliminating a Dominican club that had scored 51 runs in its first five games of the tournament.
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