{"id":540400,"date":"2026-03-14T17:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T17:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/540400\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T17:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T17:52:09","slug":"team-usa-hoping-paul-skenes-can-silence-mighty-bats-of-dominican-republic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/540400\/","title":{"rendered":"Team USA hoping Paul Skenes can silence mighty bats of Dominican Republic"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Athletic has live coverage of Italy vs. Puerto Rico<\/a> in the World Baseball Classic 2026<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

HOUSTON \u2014 Let\u2019s hope this time, Mark DeRosa didn\u2019t misspeak.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect it to be, like, one of the best games of all time,\u201d the Team USA manager said.<\/p>\n

Of course, DeRosa was talking about Sunday\u2019s World Baseball Classic semifinal between the United States and the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

Based on the teams\u2019 respective WBC performances thus far, the Dominicans would appear to be the heavy favorites.<\/p>\n

Except they\u2019re up against Paul Skenes.<\/p>\n

Among the Dominican regulars, Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. have never faced the reigning National League Cy Young award winner.<\/p>\n

Six other likely starters for the D.R. \u2014 Ketel Marte, Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Junior Caminero, Austin Wells and Gerardo Perdomo \u2014 are a combined 0 for 21.<\/p>\n

The only Dominican regular with any hits off Skenes is Julio Rodr\u00edguez, who is 3 for 6 with two doubles.<\/p>\n

Small sample sizes, to be sure. But if any mortal can stop the dominant Dominican offense, it would appear to be the former Air Force Academy and LSU pitcher who, in his first WBC start against Mexico, took the mound to the theme song from \u201cTop Gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Skenes in that game threw four scoreless innings, allowing one hit, striking out seven, while walking one. Still just 23, he has yet to waver as a professional, yet to be fazed by any circumstance. It\u2019s almost inconceivable he will crack Sunday, even though the crowd in Miami is almost certain to be pro-Dominican.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect to be the away team, for sure,\u201d Team USA center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said Friday night in his postgame interview on Fox after Team USA\u2019s 5-3 victory over Canada in the WBC quarterfinal.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s what we\u2019re looking forward to. We want the electricity, the energy of the crowd. That\u2019s why we\u2019re throwing Mr. Skenes out there for whatever he\u2019s going to give. It\u2019s going to be good.\u201d<\/p>\n

The way the U.S. offense is going, it had better be.<\/p>\n

Team USA scored a combined 24 runs in its first two games against Brazil and Great Britain. Since then, it has combined for 16 against Mexico, Italy and Canada, flailing at times even against unheralded minor-league pitchers.<\/p>\n

The D.R., by contrast, has scored 51 runs in five games. The team\u2019s 14 home runs already tie Mexico\u2019s 2009 total for the most in a single WBC. And its joyous, rollicking, bat-flipping vibe is the talk of the tournament.<\/p>\n

Team USA has yet to dive into the data on the D.R. hitters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to lie,\u201d pitching coach Andy Pettitte said. \u201cI\u2019ve been underwater trying to get ready for all of our games.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, familiarity with their major-league stars should only help, particularly since Skenes has already had some success against most of them.<\/p>\n

Skenes was not present for the Canada game; he flew ahead of Team USA to Miami. Insert, if you must, a punch line about DeRosa again, assuming the U.S. had punched its ticket to the semifinal.<\/p>\n

In truth, the idea was for Skenes to get proper rest. The rest of the team flew to Miami after beating Canada and was expected to arrive around 4 a.m. (ET) Saturday.<\/p>\n

Pettitte said he spoke with Skenes before the pitcher\u2019s departure. Not surprisingly, Skenes made it clear he wanted the ball. The U.S. victory over Canada ensured he would get that chance.<\/p>\n

The pitch limit for the semifinal and final will be 95. Both Pettitte and DeRosa said they expected Skenes to be more in the 75-80 range. Against Mexico, he threw 60. And remember, according to the baseball calendar, it\u2019s still the middle of spring training.<\/p>\n

The starter for the D.R. will be right-hander Luis Severino, a better draw for Team USA than Cristopher S\u00e1nchez, who threw five scoreless innings Friday in the Dominicans\u2019 10-0 mercy-rule victory over Korea.<\/p>\n

Severino is vulnerable to left-handed hitters, whose career .739 OPS against him is 84 points higher than right-handers\u2019 .655. Against Canada, DeRosa started five left-handed hitters \u2014 Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Roman Anthony, Brice Turang and Crow-Armstrong \u2014 plus switch-hitter Cal Raleigh.<\/p>\n

Team USA\u2019s other catcher, Will Smith, bats right-handed, but DeRosa might prefer him to Raleigh, who caught Skenes\u2019 first start. Raleigh is 0 for 9 with five strikeouts and four walks. He also had a critical passed ball Friday night after going without one the entire 2025 regular season.<\/p>\n

The only other question for DeRosa might be whether to play the left-handed Gunnar Henderson at third base over the right-handed Alex Bregman. Such a move would appear unlikely, even though Henderson is 5 for 10 and Bregman is 2 for 11, albeit with five walks to Henderson\u2019s none.<\/p>\n

DeRosa has pushed back on whether he has an \u201cA\u201d lineup and \u201cB\u201d lineup, saying he believes in all 14 of his position players. But after Friday night\u2019s win, he also said, \u201cI don\u2019t see any crazy changes taking place. We\u2019ll roll with the dudes.\u201d<\/p>\n

To beat the D.R., the Team USA dudes can\u2019t turn into the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose feeble offense left Skenes with a 10-10 record last season even though he led the majors with a 1.97 ERA. Yet, Skenes alone changes the dynamic of this matchup.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like any game that Paul Skenes pitches,\u201d Team USA captain Aaron Judge said. \u201cIt\u2019s just incredible stuff. Watching him work on his craft the past couple of weeks has been incredible.<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing him in that game against Mexico, where it\u2019s an electric environment, he just toed the slab and went out and took care of business. It was really impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

And it was only the prelude.<\/p>\n

Judge, who has played in World Series games at Yankee Stadium, said the Mexico game, \u201cwas probably the best environment I\u2019ve played in \u2026 a lot of fun, a lot of chanting, they\u2019re up standing on their feet, USA, Mexico, kind of going back and forth. It was an absolute blast.\u201d<\/p>\n

The crowd in Miami figures to be even louder, an \u201cunreal environment,\u201d in DeRosa\u2019s estimation, \u201cpretty crazy\u201d in Harper\u2019s.<\/p>\n

When Team USA played in the semifinals in Miami in 2023, the crowd support for Cuba wasn\u2019t nearly what it will be on Sunday for the Dominican Republic. And in the final against Japan, the U.S. was effectively the home team.<\/p>\n

Skenes, at this stage of his career, has yet to have a nickname stick. Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja on X) suggested \u201cPaul Bearer.\u201d But on Sunday, Skenes will take the mound with the opportunity to craft an even more descriptive moniker.<\/p>\n

How does \u201cThe Silencer\u201d sound?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Athletic has live coverage of Italy vs. Puerto Rico in the World Baseball Classic 2026.\u00a0 HOUSTON \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":540401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,143382],"class_list":["post-540400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540400","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=540400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}