Wilyer Abreu hit a go-ahead, three-run homer after Maikel Garcia sparked the comeback with a two-run shot, and Venezuela beat Shohei Ohtani and defending champion Japan 8-5 in the World Baseball Classic on Saturday night to advance to the semifinals.<\/p>\n
Venezuela reached its first WBC semis since 2009 and clinched a spot in the six-nation field for the 2028 Olympic baseball tournament, along with the United States and the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n
Venezuela will face unbeaten Italy on Monday, a day after the U.S. plays the Dominicans. <\/p>\n
Abreu gave Venezuela a 7-5 lead when he homered off loser Hiromi Itoh in the sixth, driving a 2-1 four-seam fastball 409 feet to right for his first home run of the tournament. Ezequiel Tovar made it 8-5 in the eighth, leading off with a double then scoring on a throwing error by Atsuki Taneichi on a pickoff attempt.<\/p>\n
Ohtani’s third home run of the tournament wasn’t enough for Japan, which had its 11-game WBC winning streak snapped. <\/p>\n
Ohtani, the 2023 WBC MVP, led off the bottom of the first by lifting a 2-1 slider from Ranger Su\u00e1rez 427 feet to center after Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. homered on the second pitch from Yoshinobu Yamamoto, driving a fastball 401 feet to right-center for his second home run of the WBC. <\/p>\n
Enmanuel De Jesus pitched 2 1\/3 scoreless innings for the win, and Daniel Palencia got the save, ending Japan’s fate by getting Ohtani to pop out for the final out.<\/p>\n
Japan led 5-2 after a four-run third in which Shota Morishita, who replaced the injured Seiya Suzuki at center field, hit a tiebreaking, three-run homer off Su\u00e1rez. The veteran left-hander who picked up a win in a group stage game against the Netherlands pitched 2 2\/3 innings on Saturday, allowing three hits, five runs and two home runs.<\/p>\n
Garcia homered on the eighth pitch against Chihiro Sumida to pull Venezuela within 5-4 in the fifth.<\/p>\n
World Series MVP Yamamoto allowed four hits and two runs while striking out five in four innings.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wilyer Abreu hit a go-ahead, three-run homer after Maikel Garcia sparked the comeback with a two-run shot, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525210,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24,72364],"class_list":["post-525209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}