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<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m very excited about it, needless to say. I mean, it\u2019s been a long haul,\u201d said Ernie Whitt, who has been Canada\u2019s manager for all six WBCs, after Thursday\u2019s win. \u201cThe team has really come together, we\u2019ve gelled.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
\u201cAs far as the organization is concerned, and representing our country, you couldn\u2019t ask for more. We\u2019re very excited from the top all the way down to the bottom.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Friday\u2019s other quarterfinal, South Korea takes on the Dominican Republic. On Saturday, Italy meets Puerto Rico and Venezuela faces Japan.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been 20 years since Canada last beat the U.S. in the WBC, which was an 8-6 game in Pool B in the inaugural WBC in 2006. Canada is the home team in Friday\u2019s game, even though it\u2019s being held in the U.S.<\/p>\n
Montreal\u2019s Abraham Toro said that after a 4-3 loss to Panama on March 8 dropped the Canadians to 1-1 in pool play and endangered their chances of advancing to the playoffs, the team had a meeting to mentally reset.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe just came together, and everybody was still so positive,\u201d said Toro. \u201cWe were like, \u2018hey, even though we didn\u2019t play our best, we still got two games to go,\u2019 and we cleaned it up and played really good baseball the last two games.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully we keep this momentum for the next round.\u201d<\/p>\n
Toro has been the key to Canada\u2019s offence, with a .467 batting average, hitting three doubles, a triple, a home run, and driving in five runs. He has a.529 on-base percentage and a 1.000 slugging percentage. His OPS \u2014 a sum of those two percentages \u2014 is 14th best in the entire tournament.<\/p>\n
Surprisingly, Toro\u2019s OPS is better than anyone on the U.S.\u2019s stacked lineup. <\/p>\n
That includes three-time American League most-valuable player Aaron Judge and power-hitting catcher Cal Raleigh, who was runner-up to Judge in last year\u2019s AL MVP voting.<\/p>\n
Their rotation includes Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal, last year\u2019s Cy Young Award winners as the best pitchers in the National League and American League, respectively.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe baseball (in Canada) is like anywhere in the world. Baseball is global, so it\u2019s everywhere,\u201d said infielder Otto Lopez who was born in the Dominican Republic but has only represented Canada internationally. \u201cThe message I could say is that don\u2019t underestimate any team, and mostly in this tournament. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re prepared, and I think (in the 2023 tournament) we had an experience of the WBC that caught our eye that we wanted to advance, and that is very important for us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Underestimating opponents may actually be the U.S.\u2019s Achilles heel.<\/p>\n
After the Americans beat Mexico 5-3 on Monday, manager Mark DeRosa seemed to think his team had clinched a playoff berth, even though it hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
\u201cTon of respect for Italy \u2014 it\u2019s weird \u2014 we want to win this game even though our ticket\u2019s punched to the quarterfinals because Mexico plays Italy actually tomorrow,\u201d said DeRosa in an interview. <\/p>\n
Italy beat the U.S. 8-6 the next day as DeRosa made a series of conservative strategic decisions apparently designed to rest his players.<\/p>\n
The 8-6 defeat left the Americans with a 3-1 record at the end of its pool schedule. That meant to advance, the U.S. needed Italy to beat Mexico to actually clinch. The Italians \u2014 a roster filled with American citizens \u2014 obliged with a 9-1 win over Mexico on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
DeRosa later said he \u201cmisspoke\u201d in that interview and did not believe the team had already clinched a spot.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 12, 2026.<\/p>\n
John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI\u2019m very excited about it, needless to say. I mean, it\u2019s been a long haul,\u201d said Ernie Whitt,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532113,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[879,49,48,2467,462,2461,2468,2460,2462,2463,44,2464,2465,2466,82],"class_list":["post-532112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-breaking-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-central-vancouver-island","tag-mlb","tag-nanaimo","tag-nanaimo-breaking-news","tag-nanaimo-news","tag-nanaimo-news-now","tag-nanaimonewsnow","tag-news","tag-oceanside","tag-parksville","tag-qualicum","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=532112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532112\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}