Team USA lost to Puerto Rico by a 6-5 score on Friday night, sending Puerto Rico to the finals and putting USA in a must win game on Saturday night. In the sixth inning of this contest, Andrew McCutchen was ejected for arguing a third strike call (see photo below). McCutchen seemed to think the second strike call was outside, then after a ball in the dirt, he went down looking on a 1-2 pitch that was low and outside. After a quick exchange of words, he was tossed by the home plate umpire.
McCutchen started in right field and batted lead-off. He grounded out to lead-off the game, then lined out to left field in his second at-bat. The ejection came in his third at-bat.
Josh Harrison made his first start of the WBC and played second base, batting ninth. He flew out to center field in the third inning, then popped up to second base in the fifth. In the seventh inning, he grounded out to third base to end the inning. In the top of the ninth, he came up with two outs and the tying run on third base, but Harrison struck out to end the game.
Team USA takes on the Dominican Republic tonight at 10 PM on MLB network. The winner of that game will advance to the finals and round out the four-team field, where Japan and Netherlands were joined by Puerto Rico tonight. Regardless of what happens Saturday night, half of the four Pirates participating in the WBC will see their tournament end and the other two will play in the final round, which is an elimination round consisting of three games total.
Here is a still shot of the pitch called strike three, which got McCutchen ejected.
@WBCBaseball So why is Will Little behind the plate again?Bad zone again. @TheCUTCH22 had every right to be mad! Shouldn't have been tossed! pic.twitter.com/gXbJyyp89E
— BobH (@bhbombero) March 18, 2017
