The First Western Hemisphere Game....
...of the WBC was great. Bartolo Colon pitched 60+ pitches of shutout ball for the Dominican, and left with 2-0 lead that came from a David Ortiz long ball.
The middle innings of this game showed how important the bullpen is when there's a 65 pitch count. After both starters maxxed out, Carlos Zambrano was brought in to replace Johan Santana and Miguel Batista was came in for Colon. This match up should have favored Venezuela, but Zambrano was inconsistent and gave four earned runs.
Batista, unsuprisingly, was equally incosistent and Venezuela was able to claw back into stricking distance. By the begining of the ninth inning the score was 6-5, Venezuela was only down by one run. In the top of the ninth, Venezuela made what in my judgement was a key managing mistake by bringing some triple-a dude rather than major leaguer Jorge Julio to shut down the heart of the powerful Dominican order and keep Venezuela in the game.
Miggy Tejada started off the inning by dropping a bunt single. Then, in his second homer of the day, Big Pappi crushed one off a trailer way behind the right field wall. Adrian Beltre hit his second homer of the day two batters later, and I switched over to the USA-Mexico game with the Domincan up by five runs.
The final score of this game is deceptive, and the play of both the big hitters and the over-powering pitchers was of mid-season quality. I lost count of how many players had extra base hits, and how many strike outs were thrown. Look for both of these teams to move on to the next round. The Domican is going to put up a lot of runs, but their bullpen is weak. Venezuela has pretty solid pitching, probably a little better than Japan's maybe not quite as good as Korea's, and is capable of manufacturing some runs. Bobby Abrieu is going to have to hit better for them to have a chance to move on past the next round.
It's going to be fun to watch both of these teams play again.