March 15, 2023: Puerto Rico defeats Dominican Republic in World Baseball Classic overshadowed by Edwin Díaz injury

Edwin Díaz fired another fastball, but Teoscar Hernández fouled it off, the third in a row on a 3-and-2 count. Díaz—who had been credited with 32 saves in each of the last two seasons with the New York Mets—was trying to close out a 5-2 win for Puerto Rico over the Dominican Republic in the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

Each team had a 2-1 tournament record coming into the final game of Pool D of the WBC at loanDepot Park in Miami, the home of the Miami Marlins. Earlier that day, Venezuela had beaten Israel 5-1 to finish the pool at 4-0 and earn a berth in the quarterfinal round. The Dominican Republic—one of the favorites in the Classic along with Japan and the United States—had lost to Venezuela, as had Puerto Rico. Both teams had gotten their wins against Nicaragua and Israel, Puerto Rico defeating the latter two days earlier with a perfect game stopped by the mercy rule1 in the last of the eighth.

A win over the Dominican Republic would put Puerto Rico2 into the quarterfinals, but the stubborn Hernández had stayed alive through nine pitches. Not getting his four-seamer past him, Díaz tried a slider in. Hernández didn’t bite, but plate umpire Chris Guccione pivoted to his right, shot out his left arm and pumped his right one back, bringing an eruption from about half the crowd. Puerto Rican players hurdled the railing of the first-base dugout to join their mates in celebrating.

Soon some were in tears—not from joy, however.

As the players jumped up and down in unison, Díaz fell to the ground. He was carried off the field by teammates, a wheelchair eventually needed. Díaz had a full-thickness tear in the patellar tendon in his right knee, requiring surgery that could cause him to miss all of the coming season.

The WBC had first been played in 2006, with Japan as champion. Japan won again in 2009, the Dominican Republic in 2013, and the United States in 2017. A pandemic and lockout delayed its scheduled 2021 resumption, and the WBC return in 2023 was met with enthusiasm at the first-round venues in Miami, Phoenix, Tokyo, and Taichung in Chinese Taipei.

The atmosphere was electric with rabid fans for both teams cheering, clapping, and chanting. Even with some noise-making devices, including drums, the fans’ noise was organic. Blessedly, the information on the video boards remained on baseball, not exhortations for “NOISE!” because none was needed. Unblessedly, some of the “game-production” people tried to chip in with artificial noise, apparently because they felt left out and unneeded (which was because they were unneeded).

The lineups were loaded. Puerto Rico had Francisco Lindor, Enrique “Kiké” Hernández, Javier Báez, and Eddie Rosario, while the first six batters in the Dominican Republic order were Juan Soto, Julio Rodríguez, Manny Machado, Rafael Devers, Eloy Jiménez, and Wander Franco.

The first two innings were scoreless. Fernando Cruz—who had debuted in the major leagues with the Cincinnati Reds in 2022, 15 years after he was drafted by the Kansas City Royals as an infielder—started for Puerto Rico and was pulled by manager Yadier Molina3 with runners on first and second and two out in the last of the second. Jovani Moran relieved and, after a wild pitch, struck out Francisco Mejía to end the inning.

The Dominican Republic’s Johnny Cueto breezed through the first two innings, employing his “shimmy motion” (a rock back to his right and then a return for the delivery) on most pitches with the bases empty.4 The 37-year-old Cueto, heading into his 16th big-league season, mixed up his shimmy, varying the speed on his motion, throwing in an occasional hesitation and a twitch. He sometimes mixed it up with a no-shimmy, delivering a pitch immediately after an initial step back. The quicker pitch worked in the top of the first with Hernández, who sent an easy fly to left. But Christian Vázquez was more prepared as he led off the third. When Cueto delivered quickly on a 2-and-0 pitch, Vázquez sent the ball over the left-field fence to open the scoring.

Vimael Machín followed with a single to left. Martín Maldonado tried to sacrifice and got a bonus when the ball eluded Cueto. By going after the bunt, Cueto was unable to cover first in time as first baseman Jeimer Candelario fielded the ball. With runners on first and second and no outs, Bryan Abreu relieved and gave up a run-scoring single to Lindor. Hernández followed with another single, which scored Maldonado,5 and Lindor came home on a groundout by MJ Melendez.

The 4-0 lead was more than enough for Puerto Rico, although the Dominican Republic tried to fight back. Soto led off the bottom of the third with a 448-foot home run to center off Moran, who then struck out Julio Rodríguez and was relieved by Yacksel Ríos.

Lindor made his own circuit of the bases with one out in the fifth, albeit in a different way than Soto had. Lindor lined a single to center that caught Rodríguez in a state of indecision. After starting in, Rodríguez held up to let the ball drop in front of him. In an awkward position, the 2022 American League Rookie of the Year had the ball bounce past him and roll to the warning track.

Lindor motored around second and got a stop sign from third-base coach Luis Rivera. After briefly breaking stride, Lindor hit the burners again as second baseman Ketel Marte was unable to corral Rodríguez’s throw in. Lindor completed his 15.7-second round trip6 by diving across home plate with the joyful look that has made him known as “Mr. Smile.”7 It was a 5-1 game.

The inning could have been worse for the Dominicans as Hernández drilled the next pitch to right-center, the blow eluding a backhanded attempt by Jiménez. Rodríguez tracked it down at the fence and fired to Marte, whose on-the-fly relay nailed Hernández trying to stretch the hit into a triple.8

The Dominican Republic threatened in the fifth but came away with only one run. Mejia and Soto led off with walks against Alexis Díaz (Edwin’s brother9), who had just taken over for Rios. Rodríguez lined a single to left to load the bases. Mejia came home when Machado grounded into a double play. Devers popped out to end the inning, leaving Puerto Rico with a 5-2 lead.

The scoring was complete, but highlights remained. Rodríguez made a spectacular diving catch to his right on a drive to left-center by Javier Báez with one out in the top of the sixth. Jiménez led off the bottom of the inning against Nicholas Padilla with a double off the fence in left-center, narrowly missing a home run.10 He got to third on a scratch single by Jeimer Candelario with two out but was stranded when Mejia flied out.

Jorge López and Duane Underwood Jr. worked clean innings for Puerto Rico, leaving the ninth for Edwin Díaz, who struck out Ketel Marte and pinch-hitter Jean Segura before winning his 10-pitch battle with Hernández and then losing the battle in the celebration scrum.11

The injury to Díaz prompted a tweet from commentator Keith Olbermann calling for an end to the World Baseball Classic. Wrote Olbermann, “The WBC is a meaningless exhibition series designed to: get YOU to buy another uniform, to hell with the real season, and split up teammates based on where their grandmothers got laid.”12

Regardless of Olbermann’s snark, the 2023 WBC was more popular than ever. It set records for viewership, attendance, and merchandise sales.13 The final attendance for all games was 1,306,414, the highest in WBC history, and a more than 20 percent increase over the previous record in 2017 of 1,086,720.14

The Classic culminated in a classic manner on March 21, a 3-2 win for Japan over the United States in the championship game with Shohei Ohtani striking out his Los Angeles Angels teammate, Mike Trout, to finish it.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kurt Blumenau and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

Scoresheet and memories/observations by the author, who attended the game, in addition to the 2023 World Baseball Classic Media Guide and game notes for Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org were also consulted.

Notes

1 The rule called for a game in the first round to be called if a team was ahead by at least 10 runs after seven innings or at least 15 runs after the fifth inning.

2 These teams had met five times previously in the WBC, with Dominican Republic winning three of them, including the championship in 2013.

3 The Dominican Republic manager was Rodney Linares.

4 Through two innings, Cueto threw only two pitches with a runner on base. Emmanuel Rivera led off the second with a single. Two pitches later, Javier Báez grounded into a double play.

5 Four months earlier, Maldonado and Abreu were batterymates on the Houston Astros’ 2022 World Series championship team.

6 The 15.7 seconds time was referenced in the World Baseball Classic March 17, 2023 News & Notes, which were emailed daily to those credentialed for the WBC.

7 2023 World Baseball Classic Media Guide: 203. Lindor may have thought he was getting an inside-the-park home run, but official scorer Bill Mathews credited him with a single, the other three bases accounted for by an error on Rodríguez.

8 Puerto Rico challenged the out call at third, but after video review, the call was upheld.

9 Puerto Rico had one other brother combination: manager Yadier Molina and first-base coach José Molina.

10 In 2023 Jiménez and Padilla were teammates on the Chicago White Sox.

11 Puerto Rico was defeated and eliminated in its next game while the other team from Pool D, Venezuela, lost to the United States.

12 Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann), Twitter.com, March 16, 2023. Olbermann also referred to Freddie Freeman, who had been taken out of a game by Canada with a hamstring injury the night before Diaz’s injury. After being called out by Lindsey Adler (@Lindseyadler), who pointed out that Diaz grew up in Puerto Rico and that Freeman, whose injury was not serious, played for Canada in memory of his late mother, Olbermann backed off—a bit—and tweeted, “OK, it reads sexist and for that I apologize. Make it ‘where their ancestors got laid.’ That blunt description of the artificiality of the team assignments is also trivial and for that I apologize. But WBC has always been a threat to what actually counts: The Season. Kill it.” Although more players, including José Altuve of Venezuela, were injured, Olbermann displayed admirable restraint with no further comments on the sexual activity of Altuve’s or anyone else’s grandparents.

13 For example, 42.4 percent of Japanese households watched the Japan-United States WBC Final, which took place at 8 A.M. on a Wednesday in Japan. The WBC Final was also the most-watched WBC game of all time in the United States. Many other countries had substantial increases in WBC viewership from 2017, topped by a 151 percent increase in Taiwan and 103 percent increase in Mexico. Maury Brown, “From Record-Breaking Television, Attendance and Merchandise Sales, 2023 World Baseball Classic Was a Home Run,” Forbes.com, March 23, 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2023/03/23/from-record-breaking-television-attendance-and-merchandise-sales-2023-world-baseball-classic-was-a-home-run/?sh=57d2f75528e3.

14 Press release issued by Major League Baseball, March 22, 2023.