Talent rich, spirit poor: Team USA’s WBC problem isn’t just the manager
After breezing into a news conference to muse about which of his players may have been dragging after a long night winding down and then later going on television to say unequivocally – and incorrectly – that Team USA had already clinched a berth in the elimination rounds of the World Baseball Classic, manager Mark DeRosa has spent a couple of days absorbing a battery of piñata-sized whacks.
If you’re in line for your turn, stay in line. He deserves them. But his blasé incompetence is more symptom than cause of the problems underlying American participation in the WBC.
DeRosa is at the helm for the United States for the second consecutive Classic, having taken them to a loss to Japan in the gold-medal game in 2023. He has no professional experience as a manager or even coach, but he’s a mainstay figure on MLB Network and generally considered a congenial figure, so he seemed a perfect fit for the attitude the U.S. and its players have taken into the tournament throughout its existence.
The attitude is one of bemused detachment, a speed bump in the run-up to the regular season. Players who are deep into their preparation are loath to interrupt it to play a series of glorified exhibition games, and so that is the attitude that has pervaded the American dugout and spilled over to the coaching staff.
The problem, of course, is that no one seemed to tell the rest of the world.
Even with the overwhelming majority of their roster being composed of American players of Italian descent, Tuesday night’s loss to Italy that threw the entire system into disorder was less about that individual result and more about a team that has always seemed to be less engaged in the prestige of the tournament than the majority of its opponents.
International competition draws international eyes, and the Cardinals clubhouse – once in St. Louis, once in Jupiter – has happened to be open during the Olympic gold-medal game for both men’s basketball and men’s hockey in each of the 2024 and 2026 games. In both cases, ordinary routines ground to a halt, and players mixed with media and staff to stand transfixed at the games unfolding on the clubhouse TVs.
Those were major international events, and they came with the inherent understanding that the Olympics are something to broadly be cared about. That spirit has yet to spill over among American players in the context of the WBC, despite it being the highest-level international tournament currently available for competition.
There are pleas from players to allow major leaguers to play in the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles; Bryce Harper drew a comparison between the two events at the outset of this tournament, quickly adding that he meant “no disrespect or anything” to the event in which he was about to compete.
Disrespect, though, was evident in most of what the U.S. has done as it sleepwalked through the tournament’s round robin. Its slow start against the British didn’t doom it, because the talent disparity was too large.
The Brazilians were simply run off the field.
Perhaps the perception of Mexico as a quality opponent led to an early outburst, but Mexican manager Benji Gil all but conceded that game through his own pitching choices, opting to save his best bullets for games that could get his team through the opening rounds.
The Americans, meanwhile, ran two-time defending Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal out to face the British, as though it were necessary to re-enact the Boston Tea Party with a battalion of Navy SEALs.
Skubal declared before the tournament that he would soak up a roster spot while only pitching once, and then publicly hemmed and hawed for the 24 hours following his start as he contemplated whether he’d made a mistake by deciding to bail.
No matter. Bail he did, even as the Japanese were carrying their top talent into the elimination rounds, looking again like the juggernaut against whom the Americans would be in for a real fight. That assumes, of course, that Team USA gets itself into a place to compete, and as of yet, it’s not clear that it’s on the same level.
Players who returned from the 2023 WBC found DeRosa to be likable enough, but obviously unserious and thoroughly puppeted by the league’s interest rather than that of the players. That is, more or less, why he got the job in the first place – he’s good on television, he gets along with the guys, and he’s willing to do absolutely everything in his power to avoid upsetting anyone in the game who might have an opinion on lineups or pitching deployment.
Venezuelan manager Omar Lopez told reporters earlier this week that some teams called too late to impact his pitching plans, and that they’d just have to deal with the consequences of how his players were used. That defiance might’ve been slightly exaggerated, but it did reveal some of the overwhelming desire to fight for national pride.
Venezuela’s heavily anticipated matchup with the Dominican Republic was then bumped off broadcast television to low-rent streamer Tubi once it became clear that the Italy-Mexico showdown could perhaps result in an American elimination, demonstrating fully whose interests come first in this event.
Being mad at DeRosa for not understanding the tiebreaker rules of a tournament in which he’s coaching is a reasonable reaction, but it’s far too narrow. For too long, USA Baseball has treated this tournament as an obligatory blowoff, hardly worthy of its best efforts.
That’s precisely how DeRosa got the job in the first place; it seems a little unfair to be down on him for doing what he was hired to do.