Phillies

There is Only One Man Who Can Save Team USA from its Egregious World Baseball Classic Blunder

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Mar 11th, 2026 · 9:28 AM EDT

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If you missed it last night, Team USA lost to Italy in the World Baseball Classic, final score, 8 to 6. Manager Mark DeRosa, a Penn grad (!), misread the situation and thought the U.S. was already through, so he switched up the lineup a bit:

“I misspoke… Completely misread the calculations.”

Manager Mark DeRosa confirms he did not know Team USA could still be eliminated during pool play pic.twitter.com/n5Gbo3SxcB

— Talkin' Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) March 11, 2026

Pretty ugly. Here’s the situation –

• Mexico plays Italy tonight with Aaron Nola on the mound.
• If Italy wins, they advance with USA.
• if Mexico wins while scoring 5+ runs, Mexico and USA advance.
• If Mexico wins while scoring 4 or fewer runs, Mexico and Italy advance.

This is so intriguing because Nola can help the USA advance, but he can do it in one of two ways. He can either shut down Mexico entirely and propel the Paisans to a victory, or he can get blown up entirely. We need an Italy win or a Mexico blowout.

Best case scenario? 2018 Noles shows up. Toothpick Nola. He mows ’em down with the knuckle curve – bang bang! We’re gonna start Posidelphia with Nola, but if he starts to get shaky we’re gonna jump ship faster than you can say “Topper.” We’ll go Negadelphia and hope he gets totally worked, because it’s country over club at this particular point in time. It’s about getting out of pool play and it doesn’t matter how it happens. If that means a Philadelphia Phillies gets completely rocked, so be it.

By the way –

How can DeRosa be a Penn graduate and not know how the WBC rules work? The guy graduated from Wharton! This is the most embarrassing thing to happen to Penn since somebody hacked the email system last year and alleged that the school is a “dogshit elitist institution full of woke retards.”

FORZA ITALIA!