Mark DeRosa Might’ve Boned This Big-Time

The crack of the bat. The smell of the grass. Hasty, scrawled attempts to understand and calculate a run-quotient formula. The romance of baseball is rarely felt as keenly as when it requires math. But those are the Wednesday night plans for Team USA, which after losing to Italy in a massive upset will be counting on help to decide whether it advances to the World Baseball Classic's elimination rounds, or whether it goes home in shock and disgrace.

More to the point, because recrimination is America's true pastime: Did manager Mark DeRosa think Team USA had already qualified? And did he construct his lineup accordingly, benching some of the U.S.'s best hitters in a game he didn't realize he needed to win? It is extremely not clear.

First, the baseball. The Espresso Boys knocked around Nolan McLean and Ryan Yarbrough to take an 8-0 lead by the sixth inning on the back of home runs from Kyle Teel, Sam Antonacci, and Jac Caglianone. Michael Lorenzen pitched four and two-thirds innings of two-hit ball. Team USA clawed back six runs and sent Aaron Judge to the plate as the tying run, but closer Greg Weissert got him swinging.

It's a delightful win for Italy, which is mostly made up of Italian-American MLBers, with nary a star player among them. It also continues their Cinderella run through pool play: they remain the only undefeated team in Pool B.

With the U.S. finishing at 3-1, and Mexico sitting at 2-1 before their big game against the Italians tonight, only two teams can advance. If Italy wins, they and the U.S. are through to the quarterfinals. If Mexico wins, and three teams have the same record for two slots, it'll go to tiebreakers. The first three-way tiebreaker is head-to-head record, but all three teams would be 1-1 against each other.

The second tiebreaker, per the WBC site:

The tied teams shall be ranked in the standings according to the lowest quotient of fewest runs allowed divided by the number of defensive outs recorded in the games in that round between the teams tied.

It's as if someone designed this tournament to be maximally confusing, but basically the team that has allowed fewer runs per out in pool play would move on. Because Mexico currently holds that tiebreaker over Italy, they're in if they win tonight. Where it gets interesting is the U.S./Italy tiebreaker.

Team USA would advance if Italy gives up five runs or more and loses. But Italy would advance if it loses but gives up four or fewer runs.

To make things even more complicated, because it's runs allowed per outs recorded, the above is the scenario only for a nine-inning game. If it goes extra innings, or gets mercy ruled in fewer than nine, the math changes, and I'm not willing to or capable of figuring that out.

If it's still a dead heat after that, the third tiebreaker is that damn quotient again, but with earned runs.

All of this would have been a lot simpler if Team USA had just beaten Italy. But they may very well have been under the mistaken impression that they didn't need to. After Monday's win over Mexico, Mark DeRosa said in an interview on MLB Network that "we want to win this [Italy] game, even though our ticket’s punched to the quarterfinals."

He pledged to rest some of his players—"get some guys off their feet," in his words—and indeed, Bryce Harper, Alex Bregman, Cal Raleigh, Byron Buxton, and Brice Turang were on the bench to start the game against Italy.

Why might they have needed some rest? Perhaps because Team USA stayed out celebrating after the Mexico game ... almost as if they thought they had clinched. "There’s some guys dragging today," DeRosa said before the Italy game.

The Athletic reports that video of DeRosa's comments have been taken down from MLB.com at some point overnight, and the clip that remains on MLB's Facebook page is a condensed video, without the quotes noted here. It's the most newsworthy interview of this WBC, perhaps any WBC, and they take it down? If you were looking reason to believe this was a legit fuck-up, a cover-up could be pretty convincing evidence.

DeRosa was asked about those comments after the loss to Italy. It did not entirely clear things up.

It's one thing to "misspeak." It's another entirely if DeRosa and his staff constructed this lineup believing that Team USA had already clinched. It's also unclear whether the American players understood they still needed to win that game. I suspect we'll get some more clarity on that today, but it may be too late. It's easy to envision a scenario tonight where Mexico scores a couple runs early, and both teams mostly stop swinging and cruise to their mutual benefit. The group-play elimination of the best team in U.S. history would be embarrassing either way, but to go out Nick Young–style would be a fuck-up for all time.