World Baseball Classic standings: Team USA faces pivotal game against Colombia

Neither of the top two World Baseball Classic favorites can advance on the final day of the group stage.

With only Wednesday to play, both Team USA and the Dominican Republic are sitting 2-1 and could see their chances of making it to the playoffs of the tournament disappear if they lose. At the same time, in case of victory, the US team can advance to the next round.

Team USA will play 1st-2nd ranked Colombia to level their rivals in the standings with a win on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Canada 2-1 and Mexico 2-1 will play each other earlier in the day, with the winner guaranteed to take the lead and the loser facing either elimination (if Team USA wins) or a three-way draw with the USA and Colombia in case the US loses (more on this later).

Meanwhile, in the Dominican Republic, the situation is much simpler. Venezuela has already taken the lead after the starting score of 3:0, Puerto Rico also 2:1. Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico play Wednesday in a knockout match.

Pools A and B are already determined, with Cuba and Italy out of A in tiebreaks after all five teams finished 2-2, while Japan went undefeated in Group B, followed by Australia 3-1.

When will Team USA play the World Baseball Classic?

The USA-Columbia game is scheduled for 10:00 pm ET (FS1) at Chase Field in Arizona. Canada will play Mexico at 3:00 pm ET (FS2) at the same venue, while Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will play at 7:00 pm ET (FS1) at CreditDepot Park in Miami.

World Baseball Classic Pool C standings

Here’s the full standings, released on Wednesday, with every team except Great Britain having played three of the four games. The British have already played all four teams in the group and have been eliminated:

So it’s a win-win for each of the three North American countries. If the US team wins, it advances and the losing Mexico-Canada is eliminated. But with the defeat of the US team, everything becomes very difficult.

What happens in the USA team tiebreak?

Here are the first and second WBC tiebreak rules taken straight from the MLB website:

Losing the US would create a three-way draw with Colombia and losing Mexico-Canada. The first tiebreak will depend on this last team as Colombia will advance if the other two teams are USA and Mexico because it would have beaten both teams.

However, if Mexico wins and puts Canada in a three-way tie, the case goes to a second tiebreaker as the US beats Canada, Canada beats Colombia, and Colombia beats the US.

Here are the run odds for draw games between USA, Canada and Colombia. Canada allowed just 12 runs to 48 strikeouts against the US and Colombia. Team USA allowed one run to 21 strikeouts in the win over Canada, while Colombia allowed five runs to 27 strikeouts in the loss to Canada.

We don’t need to go into all the math, but here’s the state of the game: If Team USA loses by four or fewer runs, the Americans advance until they allow more than 11 runs. If Colombia wins by five or more runs, they advance unless they allow more than 13 runs. Basically, Canada will be praying for a comically high-scoring game, and the US will enter the game with a virtual four-round lead over Colombia.

Here is a breakdown of what will happen with each pair of winners on Wednesday:

Nobody ever said that playing billiards is easy.

World Baseball Classic Pool D Ranking

As a reminder, this is how things are in Miami:

With the hype surrounding Team USA and the Dominican Republic in the tournament, a testament to the chaos at the World Baseball Classic is that both the US and the Dominican Republic faced a very real chance of being eliminated on Wednesday.

Team USA’s roster is so tough that it beat Jeff McNeil, a 2022 MLB All-Star, in 9th place. The Dominican Republic opened the tournament with Gary Sanchez, a two-time All-Star and Silver Slugger winner, in the same spot.

Both teams faced some questions about their serve, but that should have been a talking point when they faced the likes of Japan and Cuba, not in the first round.