MIAMI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony homered and the United States limited the Dominican Republic\u2019s electric offense to win a thrilling semifinal 2-1 on Sunday and move one win from capturing its second World Baseball Classic championship.<\/p>\n
The loaded American roster, led by National League Cy Young Award winner Paul Skenes<\/a> and featuring stars Bryce Harper and Aaron Judge, reached its third straight WBC title game after winning in 2017 and falling to Shohei Ohtani<\/a> and Japan in 2023. The Americans will face the winner of Monday\u2019s semifinal between Italy and Venezuela in Tuesday\u2019s title game.<\/p>\n The Dominicans reached the semifinals for the first time since winning the WBC title in 2013, but missing the championship was not the goal for a roster that featured six players who finished among the top 10 in MVP voting last year and cruised through the early rounds of this WBC.<\/p>\n They faced their biggest test of the tournament against Skenes (2-0), who gave up one run on six hits through 4 \u2153 innings, and the U.S. bullpen, which held the Dominicans scoreless the rest of the way.<\/p>\n The Dominican Republic threatened in the ninth when Julio Rodr\u00edguez drew a walk and advanced to third against Mason Miller. With two outs, Miller struck out Geraldo Perdomo for his second save.<\/p>\n Junior Caminero hit a solo drive off Skenes in the second to give the Dominicans a record 15 homers in the tournament, surpassing the mark set by Mexico in 2009. He finished the tournament hitting .350.<\/p>\n The matchup between the two star-studded lineups didn\u2019t fail to deliver big moments, especially on defense.<\/p>\n Judge got it started in the third with a 95.7-mph laser from right field to get Fernando Tatis Jr. at third. The Yankees\u2019 All-Star then found himself on the other side of a huge defensive play in the fifth when Rodr\u00edguez \u2014 an inning after being hit on the wrist by a 98-mph fastball from Skenes \u2014 scaled the center-field wall to rob Judge of a home run.<\/p>\n Henderson, starting at third base over Alex Bregman, homered off Luis Severino to tie it in the fourth before Anthony hit the go-ahead homer, connecting on a 3-2 sinker from loser Gregory Soto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony homered and the United States limited the Dominican Republic\u2019s electric offense to win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221677,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[15931,101340,30116,100919,101339,10664,57783,26459,48,52,51,47,50,49,7867,2668,101338,101337,6949,12967,40746],"class_list":["post-221676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-aaron-judge","tag-american-roster","tag-dominican-republic","tag-dominicans","tag-gunnar-henderson","tag-homer","tag-italy","tag-julio-rodriguez","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-mason-miller","tag-run","tag-second-save","tag-skenes","tag-third","tag-tournament","tag-wbc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}