World Baseball Classic: Venezuela advances to first WBC final and a shot at redemption vs. Team USA

· Yahoo Sports

MIAMI — At long last, Venezuela will play on the biggest stage international baseball has to offer. One of the proudest and most prolific baseballing nations made its long-awaited breakthrough on Monday, toppling Team Italy 4-2 in the World Baseball Classic semifinals to punch its first ticket to the tournament’s championship game. 

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Awaiting Venezuela on Tuesday will be Team USA, which eliminated Venezuela in heartbreaking fashion in the quarterfinals three years ago, a loss that still stings for those involved. Venezuela’s chance at redemption and the country’s first WBC title is finally here.

At the time of the first World Baseball Classic in 2006, just 181 Venezuelan-born players had ever reached the major leagues. That total has since ballooned to a cool 500, with the South American country of roughly 30 million people proving to be a reliable source of elite talent for big-league clubs. But even as the Venezuelan star power blossomed, its showings in the premier international baseball tournament underwhelmed. After bowing out in the semifinals against South Korea in 2009, Venezuela failed to reach the knockout stage in the next two tournaments. In 2023, an undefeated run through pool play was left unfulfilled when Team USA thwarted Venezuela in the quarters on Trea Turner’s go-ahead grand slam in the eighth.

That history put Venezuela in a unique position entering this year’s Classic. The three other countries considered the consensus favorites — USA, Dominican Republic and Japan — had all won the tournament before, while Venezuela had never even reached the final. And paired with D.R. in pool play, with the prospect of facing Japan in the knockout stage, Venezuela’s chances of claiming the crown were widely considered fourth-best in the field. 

But because of the talent on the roster, it was impossible to discount the possibility that this would be the year Venezuela got over the hump. And sure enough, despite dropping the pool play finale against D.R., Venezuela rallied to finally reach the title game with rousing victories over Samurai Japan and a surprisingly stout Team Italy.

Yet for the first two hours of Monday’s semifinal, such a splendid scenario seemed unlikely. Facing an unbeaten Italian squad buzzing from espresso shots and well-earned confidence, Venezuela struggled to seize on its overwhelming home-field advantage. Starter Keider Montero faltered fast, walking three consecutive batters in the second inning and enabling Italy to jump to a 2-0 lead. Eugenio Suarez provided a brief spark in the fourth with a solo homer, but Venezuela continued to trail as the innings ticked by. 

Italian starter Aaron Nola kept the bats quiet for four frames. Fellow veteran Michael Lorenzen did the same for another two innings. Vibes in the Venezuelan-heavy crowd reached a nadir in the seventh, when both Wilyer Abreu and William Contreras struck out after Gleyber Torres’ leadoff walk. Minutes later, though, the volume in the dome reached a crescendo as four consecutive singles from Jackson Chourio, Ronald Acuña Jr., Maikel Garcia and Luis Arraez flipped the one-run deficit into a two-run lead and crystalized the vision of a championship berth. Nine outs later — no Italian hitter reached base the final three frames — that vision was actualized, as Daniel Palencia unleashed a 99-mph fastball past Sam Antonacci to seal the deal.

But as momentous of a victory as this was for Venezuela, there’s no time to celebrate. This isn’t like the MLB postseason, in which a team that wins a championship series has at least a couple days to reset before the World Series. No, the WBC features a much more compressed schedule, especially for the team that wins the second semifinal. While Team USA got a day to enjoy and rest after its semifinal triumph over the D.R., Venezuela will be right back at it less than 24 hours later.

The degree to which this title game should be considered a rematch of the contest three years ago in Miami is debatable, but a few main characters remain. Both managers, Team USA’s Mark DeRosa and Venezuela’s Omar Lopez, returned to lead their squads in 2026. Ahead of USA’s semifinal against D.R., DeRosa said he thought back to that showdown when watching Venezuela’s dramatic victory over Japan on Saturday.

“We had that moment three years ago with the grand slam from Trea Turner,” DeRosa said. “I was laying in bed last night watching their game, and when Wilyer Abreu hit the home run, I thought it was kind of like, ‘Wow, they waited three years to have that moment.’”

But while that Turner swing is sure to be replayed leading up to Tuesday’s final, it also serves as a reminder of how much these teams have changed. Turner, though still an elite player, is no longer around, with Bobby Witt Jr. — a pinch-runner for another holdover, Kyle Schwarber, in the game three years ago — taking over as the starting shortstop. Witt is now one of USA’s headliners, with Paul Goldschmidt, the only other position-player returner, a bench presence after hitting in the heart of Team USA’s order previously. 

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There’s more continuity in the Venezuelan lineup. Five starters from the 2023 quarterfinal — Acuna, Arraez, Suarez, Torres and Salvador Perez — are expected to start Tuesday, with Andrés Giménez another key returner. That said, there are some big names missing for Venezuela this time, most notably leadoff man Jose Altuve, who was unable to participate this time due to challenges obtaining insurance. (That didn’t stop Altuve, with Astros spring training a short drive north in West Palm Beach, from being in the building on Monday.)

On the mound, there are wholesale changes on both sides. Of the 14 pitchers (seven for each team) who appeared in the quarterfinal three years ago, just one is on the roster this time: David Bednar, who surrendered a homer to Arraez in the bottom of the seventh in 2023 before Turner’s script-flipping swing the next frame. DeRosa has already indicated that Bednar probably won’t be available Tuesday after recording some enormous, high-leverage outs in both the quarterfinal and semifinal. But both managers still have a deep selection of arms to turn to, with Lopez joking postgame that even his pitching coach, former Cy Young winner Johan Santana, will be available. 

Both team’s pitching staffs — particularly the bullpens — have stepped up in big ways en route to the championship, and now there’s one game left for those stellar units to cover if they are to become WBC champions. The two teams arrive in the finals with identical 3.00 ERAs through 54 innings of tournament play, though Team USA’s peripheral stats (0.87 WHIP, 76 strikeouts, nine walks) stand out a bit more than Venezuela’s (1.09 WHIP, 57 strikeouts, 18 walks). 

Exactly which pitchers will emerge as main characters in the finale remains to be seen, but we do know who’ll take the ball first. For Venezuela, it’ll be veteran lefty Eduardo Rodriguez, whose first outing in the tournament came against D.R. in pool play, when he allowed three runs across just 2 ⅔ innings of work. Rodriguez’s raw stuff was solid then, recording five of his eight outs via strikeout and showcasing a tick more velocity than usual, but his execution will need to improve if he wants to find more success against a loaded USA lineup.

Rodriguez will not be alone in his pursuit of a bounce-back outing. Starting for Team USA will be 24-year-old right-hander Nolan McLean, last seen as the opening act of the Americans’ shocking defeat against Italy. After he struck out the side with a trio of vicious breaking balls in the first inning of that contest, Italy’s bottom of the order jumped on a pair of heaters in the second, with White Sox youngsters Kyle Teel and Sam Antonacci launching home runs to put Team USA in an early 3-0 hole. McLean completed just three innings on 55 pitches.

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The 65-pitch limit in pool play tempered expectations for McLean’s WBC debut, but even so, it was a disappointing showing for the Mets’ righty, who completed at least five innings and threw at least 90 pitches in all eight of his major-league starts last season. While Italy’s impressive performances in the games since have perhaps made that loss less humiliating for Team USA, the fact that McLean was a chief participant in the letdown looms large as he is tasked with handling an even better Venezuelan lineup. 

Having finished below the 50-inning threshold required to graduate from rookie status, McLean is entering 2026 as the consensus top pitching prospect in baseball. But across his debut outings, he did encounter some of the key hitters in Venezuela’s lineup, including Torres, Suarez and Acuña, who pummeled a poorly located sweeper from McLean for a titanic home run on Aug. 22, the pitcher’s first allowed in the bigs. It’ll be interesting to see how McLean deploys his six-pitch mix against those familiar foes, as well as the bats beyond them.

“I would think I'm probably around 65 or 70 [pitches] just with the ramp-up,” McLean said Monday of his expected workload in the WBC final, with the pitch count rising to 95. “But just until Mark comes and gets me.”

Redemption will be the theme on Tuesday, for both the starters and the teams at large. McLean or Rodriguez could end up being the most pivotal arm in this deciding game, but the collective pitching efforts have defined both teams’ tournament runs so far. That trend might well continue in the final — or perhaps an offensive explosion from one or both of the star-studded lineups is in store.

Heroes will emerge one way or another — they always do — and Team USA or Venezuela will be crowned WBC champion, either result rich with storylines to soak up in the final days before the MLB regular season begins. A tournament that has already produced an abundance of highlights featuring the game’s biggest stars has one more showcase to wow its global audience. 

This is no seven-game series. It’s a one-game, winner-take-all contest for international baseball glory. Let’s enjoy it.

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