Aaron Judge hit a two-run home run and Brice Turang had three hits and four RBIs to lead the United States to a 15-5 win over Brazil in its World Baseball Classic opener Friday night.<\/p>\n
With one out and one on in the first, Judge connected off Bo Takahashi at Houston\u2019s Daikin Park.<\/p>\n
Lucas Ramirez \u2014 with his father, 12-time All-Star Manny Ramirez, in attendance \u2014 hit two home runs for Brazil. He cut the lead to 2-1 with his leadoff blast, and his solo shot in the eighth pulled Brazil within 8-5.<\/p>\n
At 20 years, 49 days, he became the youngest player in WBC history with a multihomer game.<\/p>\n
Byron Buxton was hit by a pitch in the fifth to push the Americans\u2019 lead to 4-1. Turang cleared the bases with his double to left two pitches later to make it 7-1.<\/p>\n
Brazil is in the WBC for just the second time and first since 2013. The team fell to 0-4 all time in the tournament after losing to Japan, Cuba and China in 2013.<\/p>\n
Another highlight for Brazil came when 17-year-old high school senior Joseph Contreras\u00a0got Judge to ground into a bases-loaded double play\u00a0to end the second inning. Contreras, the youngest player in the WBC this year, is the son of pitcher Jos\u00e9 Contreras, who played 11 MLB seasons.<\/p>\n
Lucas Rojo hit an RBI single for Brazil in the seventh before a two-run shot by Victor Mascai off Michael Wacha cut the lead to 7-4.<\/p>\n
Bryce Harper\u2019s RBI single got things going in the ninth as the U.S. tacked on seven more runs.\u00a0The Americans walked 17 times and forced Brazil to throw 221 pitches.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, Brazil faces Italy and the U.S. plays Britain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aaron Judge hit a two-run home run and Brice Turang had three hits and four RBIs to lead…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5158,5256,3914,591,85],"class_list":["post-524554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chicago-cubs","tag-chicago-white-sox","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}