Fault, ultimately, starts at the top. Team USA failed against Italy. Someone needs to shoulder that blame. The trouble is, the wrong person is taking the bulk of it.
This isn’t solely Mark DeRosa’s fault.
Tuesday’s events — both DeRosa’s misguided comments and the 8-6 loss to Italy — were not all that went wrong.
Let’s start with DeRosa’s comments, since the bulk of the attention has focused there. Team USA had won its first three games of pool play by a combined score of 24-9. DeRosa made an appearance on MLB Network’s “Hot Stove” show on Tuesday morning. In the interview, DeRosa makes two comments that are now coming back against him (via Chad Jennings at The Athletic):
“we want to win this game, even though our ticket’s punched to the quarterfinals.”
“I’m going to get some guys off their feet, no question about it.”
With Team USA down early against Italy, clips started to go viral on social media before MLB.com pulled the interview down completely. Enough damage had been done, and DeRosa was forced to address the comments following the game. To his credit, he owned the mistake.
“I was on Hot Stove with a couple of buddies today and completely misread the calculations. We knew that Mexico was going to play Italy, and then running all the numbers, if we lost tonight with the runs allowed and runs scored and outs — so, I just misspoke.”
Maybe DeRosa “misread the calculations”. Maybe he was given incorrect/incomplete information. Maybe DeRo and his experienced coaching staff misinterpreted that information. Maybe someone should have questioned it. Or just known better. Maybe someone at USA Baseball (or Major League Baseball) should have been in the room to provide him with the correct interpretations to begin with.
Maybe this isn’t totally on DeRosa.
Then there is the lineup the United States fielded against Italy. It’s not exactly clear if those comments — or, at least, the thought behind them, intentional or otherwise — contributed to DeRosa’s lineup decisions.
Gunnar Henderson started at third base instead of Alex Bregman (to “keep Gunnar’s hot bat” in the lineup after he went 4-for-5 against Great Britain three days earlier). Will Smith started behind the plate instead of Cal Raleigh (though, aside from the HR numbers, it’s hard to call this a significant downgrade). Paul Goldschmidt started at first base instead of Bryce Harper (the broadcast claimed it was “to get Goldy fresh before the later rounds,” but his inclusion at all on the roster was questionable). Ernie Clement started at second instead of Brice Turang (allegedly for similar reasons as Goldschmidt being in the lineup). Pete Crow-Armstrong started in center instead of Byron Buxton (if Buxton hadn’t been hit by a pitch already in the tournament, this might have gone the other way).
Henderson homered but struck out three times. Smith had two hits, including a double. Goldschmidt singled and struck out before Harper took over. Clement was hitless before ceding way to Turang. PCA was the bright spot for the US, hitting a pair of home runs with 4 RBI.
It’s all easy to second-guess after the game. Considering the short nature of the tournament itself, the lose-and-go-home format of the next rounds, and the fact that (most) players are still, arguably, in spring-training condition, it is relatively easy to see why DeRosa made some of these lineup decisions. Players need to get at-bats if they’re going to be ready for the regular season (case in point, look at the attention it received on Monday when DeRosa had to admit that he’d received a call from Alex Cora because Garrett Whitlock hadn’t pitched in Team USA’s first two games).
Yet, more than a few suggestions have been made that DeRosa “didn’t care about this game” when setting the lineup against Italy. Some have questioned the timing of his in-game changes, as well, with no substitutions being made until the seventh inning. A video from Jomboy Media made several notable points about this (notably highlighting the fact that when David Bednar loaded the bases, instead of a rested Mason Miller warming in the bullpen, it was Clayton Kershaw1). Jomboy’s final point — either the team didn’t understand the tiebreaker rules, or they didn’t manage to them — is resonating (and, ultimately, accurate).
DeRosa deserves criticism for his role in this, sure, but this won’t define his career. At least, it shouldn’t.
DeRosa has shown an interest in managing in the majors (he interviewed for the Mets’ opening in 2017 before the team hired Mickey Callaway). He’s been the long-time face of MLB Network. Yet, more than a few well-known parts of the baseball media world have suggested he’ll never receive a serious chance to manage in the big leagues after this. Some have even gone as far as saying he “can’t be trusted in his role at MLB Network anymore, if he doesn’t know the rules of the game”.
Such suggestions are ludicrous. DeRo may not be asked back to manage Team USA in 2029, but that’s hardly a decision to be made today.
Pundits gushed over Team USA’s roster ahead of the tournament. Not only was the US team a favorite to reach the finals and win, but it was being hailed as the “greatest US team ever put together”. There was no chance they could fail, right?
The trouble is, this wasn’t the best roster that could have been put together.
DeRosa — and captain Aaron Judge — are routinely being praised during broadcasts for how they recruited some of the game’s best players to join the roster, but the responsibility for assembling the team ultimately falls to GM Michael Hill. It is Hill who should be receiving a share of the blame.
There’s no questioning the talent on Team USA. The official roster announcement in early February touted the inclusion of 65 All-Star Game selections, four MVP Award winners, and both of last year’s Cy Young Award winners. Late injuries forced a handful of replacements (Roman Anthony took Corbin Carroll’s place after the latter broke his hamate bone, while Ryan Yarbrough took Joe Ryan’s place after Ryan was scratched from a spring training start with back inflammation).
Paul Goldschmidt is a future Hall of Famer, with a .288/.378/.504 (137 OPS+) slash line over a 15-year career. He’s won an MVP Award, played in seven All-Star Games, and can also boast about a .277/.354/.564 line in 113 postseason plate appearances.
Goldschmidt hit .274/.328/.403 (104 OPS+) in 2025, but that was largely buoyed by his numbers against left-handed pitching (.336/.411/.570). As Jomboy noted, Goldschmidt was the 5th-worst qualified hitter (out of 155) in the majors last season against righties. The 38-year-old “settled” for a one-year, $4 million deal in the offseason to play a bench role for the Yankees.
If the broadcast team is to be believed, Goldschmidt was “added as a leader in the clubhouse” because of his prior experience in the WBC (going 1-for-13 in 2017 and 7-for-25 in 2023). If that’s truly the reason behind his inclusion on the roster, it’s a curious one. To start, there are others on the roster with tournament experience: Bregman played in 2017 (2-for-4), while Smith (2-for-10), Bednar (1 ER in 4.0 IP), Kyle Schwarber (3-for-14), and Bobby Witt Jr. (1-for-3) were all on the 2023 team.
Clayton Kershaw is also a future Hall of Famer, with 223 wins, 3052 SO, and a 2.53 ERA (154 ERA+) over an 18-year career. He won three Cy Young Awards, an MVP, played in 11 All-Star Games, and won three World Series titles (2020, 2024, 2025).
Kershaw was 11-2 with a 3.36 ERA (124 ERA+) last season. It had been suspected for much of the year that he was considering retirement, with an announcement coming just before the postseason.
Goldschmidt and Kershaw were both added to the Team USA roster to serve as veteran leaders in the clubhouse, but on a roster already loaded with talented players, why did Michael Hill even feel this was necessary? The very first player announced as having joined the team was Judge, who was promptly named the team’s captain, and Hill still felt it was needed to add more “leadership” to the clubhouse. It doesn’t add up, frankly.
American players with a higher OPS than Goldschmidt last season: George Springer, Pete Alonso, Michael Busch, Matt Olson, Hunter Goodman, Kyle Tucker, and many others.
American players with a lower ERA than Kershaw last season: Hunter Brown, Garrett Crochet, Max Fried, Andrew Abbott, Jacob deGrom, Kevin Gausman, and many others.
The point: there were many other options for these two roster spots. There were other options that could have been better replacement choices than Ryan Yarbrough, too.
The consternation, complaints, and discussion have mostly focused on Mark DeRosa’s faults, but this is a failure by USA Baseball. A better-constructed, more-rounded roster (or a more experienced manager) may have put this team in a different position.
Instead, the loss to Italy didn’t eliminate Team USA from advancing in the WBC. That fate depended on the result of Wednesday’s game between Italy and Mexico:
If Italy won, they’d be 4-0 and advance as the top seed from Pool B. Team USA would advance as the second seed.
If Mexico won, the three countries would be tied at 3-1. Mexico would advance as the top seed, and a tiebreaker (runs allowed divided by defensive outs recorded in the games among the three tied teams) would come into play. Assuming a normal nine-inning game, Italy would need to hold Mexico to fewer than five runs in order to advance as the second seed.
Italy scored early and often against Mexico — Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino did his part with the first three-homer game in WBC history, but he was hardly the only player in Italy’s lineup swinging the bat well in the 9-1 victory — making much of Wednesday’s concern and frustration over Team USA’s status a moot point. Italy advances to the quarterfinals and will face Puerto Rico on Saturday. The US advances and will face Canada on Friday.
The format shifts to single elimination with the quarterfinals (lose and you go home), but it’s realistic that any of the eight teams that reach this point could win the tournament. All it takes is a good run to win three more games.
Maybe all of Wednesday’s nonsense was the wake-up call this team needed.
Team USA isn’t out of it … for now.
1 Despite his lengthy career track record, Kershaw doesn’t have much experience working out of the bullpen — and they weren’t strong outings. Kershaw made two appearances out of the Dodgers ‘pen during October’s playoff run: allowing 5 R (4 ER) on 6 H and 3 BB with a pair of home runs against the Padres in the NLDS, before facing just a single hitter in the World Series (in the 12th inning of an 18-inning game).