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Even the avid baseball fan would have acknowledged that were Venezuela to win the World Baseball Classic, Ronald Acuña Jr. would likely be the MVP. 

Maikel Garcia made sure to keep it in the family. 

He's almost better-known as the cousin of the great Atlanta Braves outfielder, but in leading Venezuela to its first World Baseball Classic championship, Garcia forged his own road to stardom. 

Garcia led the WBC with 10 hits in seven games and they came in almost every form: A home run, a bunt single and a pair of doubles as he drove in seven runs and stole three bases – absolute kerosene in Venezuela’s No. 2 hole between Acuña and three-time batting champion Luis Arráez.

This World Baseball Classic, the moment never looked too great for Team Venezuela. They stared down an early deficit against defending champions Japan, then caught fire to overtake them and reach the semifinals. When the upstart Team Italy gave them a scare, they once again punched back, riding a seventh-inning rally to punch their ticket to their very first WBC final. On Tuesday night, against a hungry Team USA, Venezuela’s offense struck quickly and Eduardo Rodriguez set the tone with a terrific start on the mound. Even when Bryce Harper’s late home run tied the score, they responded immediately with a rally of their own to jump back on top. In the end, Eugenio Suárez’s go-ahead double in the top of the ninth was the crowning moment for Venezuela, who celebrated their first ever World Baseball Classic championship at loanDepot park in Miami.

Both starting pitchers came out of the gate hot. Nolan McLean induced a double play from speedster Maikel Garcia and retired the side on five pitches in the top of the first, then Rodriguez wasted little time sending the U.S. packing in the home half. The next time Garcia saw McLean though, there were two runners in scoring position in the third. The Royals third baseman and soon-to-be WBC MVP (.970 OPS with a WBC-leading 10 hits) hammered a ball to Byron Buxton in left center field, but it was plenty deep enough to score the game’s first run for Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Rodriguez continued to hum. The 32-year old southpaw cruised through 4.1 innings, scattering two baserunners while striking out four. He combined with Mariners reliever Eduard Bazardo to limit the star-spangled American lineup to one hit in the first five full frames. E-Rod has had his share of struggles the past few seasons, but he was in vintage form in what must have ranked as the biggest game of his life.

In the top of the fifth, Venezuela exploited McLean’s biggest weakness: the home run ball. Red Sox outfielder Wilyer Abreu, whose go-ahead home run against Japan gave Venezuela the chance to make it to this game, punished a middle-middle fastball from McLean to the deepest part of loanDepot park and extended the lead to 2-0.

Venezuela manager Omar López was able to turn things over to his bullpen, a unit which carried the day in the quarterfinal against Japan and especially in the semifinal against Italy. Giants righty José Buttó pitched around a Harper two-out single, then Angel Zerpa and Andrés Machado combined for a scoreless seventh.

Meanwhile, the American bullpen matched Venezuela’s stride for stride. Brad Keller took over for McLean with two outs in the fifth and passed the baton to Will Vest after collecting four quick outs. Vest posted a scoreless seventh, then Griffin Jax a spotless eighth. Much like the semifinals, this game would come down to the late innings.

In the bottom of the eighth, Team USA got a runner aboard with two outs for the third straight inning—this time on a walk from Bobby Witt Jr. As any baseball fan knows, you can only allow two-out baserunners so many times before a team makes you pay. Indeed, Bryce Harper only needed one swing to make Machado pay dearly for the free pass. He clobbered Machado’s 1-0 center-cut changeup over the center field wall for a dramatic game-tying home run.

From there, it could have been so easy to crumble, but Machado rebounded to strike out Aaron Judge to end the inning. It was a tough night for the captain, as he went 0-for-4 with a hat trick of K’s. Having been four outs away from victory, Venezuela needed to muster a quick reply—and did they ever.

It started with what else but a leadoff walk. Boston’s Garrett Whitlock lost Luis Arraez to a base-on-balls; López sent in Marlins speedster Javier Sanoja to pinch-run. Sanoja immediately put the rally on the line by taking off for second, and beat Brice Turang’s tag by a shoestring. The call upheld on review, giving Venezuela a critical runner in scoring position.

Enter Eugenio Suárez. The veteran slugger worked Whitlock to a full count before slashing the payoff offering to the left-center gap. Pete Crow-Armstrong could only reach it on the first bounce—Sanoja motored home to put Venezuela back on top. Tyler Rogers entered to put out the fire, but Team USA was once again compelled to come from behind.

Venezuelan closer Daniel Palencia entered with no margin for error to close out the World Baseball Classic. He gave them no quarter. First, he struck out Kyle Schwarber. Then, he induced a harmless popup from pinch-hitter Gunnar Henderson to Garcia at third. Finally, Palencia got Roman Anthony to swing through a fastball and give his country their first World Baseball Classic crown.

After having to rally from behind in the previous two rounds to reach their first ever title game, Venezuela was able to snag the initiative, bounce back from the late Harper homer, and again rely on their bullpen to finish the job. In the postgame, They got their revenge on America in the process—in 2023, Team USA rallied from behind to stun them on the back of a Trea Turner grand slam, but this time, they could not find the go-ahead hit.

As for why this theoretical best US lineup ever constructed never fully jelled, well, it’s impossible to say. But not for nothing, the hitting coach for this group is a guy who should be familiar to Yankee fans.

Now, the MLB season awaits. It’s always sad when the WBC wraps up, but the 2026 Classic was another terrific tournament, providing thrills the whole way through. At last, Aaron Judge will go from being Team USA captain back to New York Yankees captain, and a consequential season in pinstripes awaits. Of course, we at Pinstripe Alley will be with you for every out, run, and win.

Congratulations to Team Venezuela!

Box Score

Hall of Fame pitcher John Smoltz believes he has a way to make the World Baseball Classic even better. 

Smoltz appeared on “The Dan Patrick Show” on Tuesday and was asked how MLB could up the ante with the international baseball tournament. 

“I think you make it bigger when you do it in the middle of the season and shut it down for a week,” Smoltz opined. “I’ve been saying that for years. I think it’s the perfect spot to showcase the international talent, you would have everybody wearing that uniform, they’d be in midseason form, there would be no restrictions, you truly get to see the Goliath against the Goliath without them coming out and throwing a million arms.”

"I think you make it bigger when you do it in the middle of the season and shut it down for a week."

– John Smoltz on how to make the WBC bigger. pic.twitter.com/ZMhCRDRy5s

— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) March 17, 2026

This year’s World Baseball Classic has been incredibly successful for the sport, with Tuesday’s championship, won 3-2 by Venezuela over Team USA, expected to shatter viewership records. 

While Smoltz acknowledged it likely wouldn’t ever happen, he pointed to the success of the Four Nations Face-Off the NHL put on in 2025 instead of an All-Star Game. 

“This tournament has accomplished its goals,” Smoltz said about the WBC. “Team Italy, baseball’s gonna be thought of differently there. You’ve got other countries that are bringing baseball to the forefront when other sports were really kinda marquee and king. That has worked. Is it the perfect timing? No.”

He said he passed along his idea to MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and said he would be OK with the idea of doing a World vs. USA format to replace the MLB All-Star Game. 

“If you shut the game down for a week and give everybody the break they need, you could do so many things to promote within that week and own that week,” Smoltz said.

While Smoltz’s ideas are interesting, it would be a tough sell for MLB to hold the event in the middle of a season. 

And while the eight-time All-Star made a fair point in the tough job Team USA manager Mark DeRosa has, having to run decisions by players’ MLB managers first, that likely wouldn’t go away during some sort of in-season international tournament.

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — Somewhat quietly, Will Warren is nearing the end of a strong spring.

If he can carry over that success into the regular season, it probably will not stay as quiet.

In his penultimate start of the Grapefruit League schedule, Warren looked sharp again, giving up one run over four-plus innings while striking out four to lower his ERA to 1.77 through five starts.

“Will’s kind of the non-talked-about guy, I feel like, in our rotation,” manager Aaron Boone said before the 3-2 win over the Rays at Charlotte Sports Park. “He looks great. Obviously he threw the ball well for us last year, but it feels like another notch to me.”

Each of the last two springs, at this point on the calendar, Warren still did not know whether he was going to be starting the season in the big league rotation.

And while his spot this year is secured at least to start the season, coming off a 33-start year in 2025, Warren has kept the same approach like he is fighting for a job while making adjustments to get better.

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That has included moving to the third-base side of the rubber, which has given him better angles to attack both righties and lefties, and starting to use the PitchCom on his belt to call some pitches.

“Sometimes I want to make sure that I get a pitch thrown in that count without hesitation, especially with the [pitch] clock, so I’ll call it,” said Warren, who plans to use it in the regular season as well. “Sometimes I send in two [pitch calls], J.C. [Escarra] gives me one back and sometimes I just let him do his thing because I trust him back there.”

The end goal is to have confidence and conviction in what he is throwing, which Warren indicated is the biggest difference for him now versus the end of last season.

“Just going up there and throwing my stuff over the plate,” he said. “This whole spring, [the goal has been] being as efficient as possible. Max Fried’s made a great career out of that and he’s going to keep doing it. So trying to pitch like that.”

Though Gerrit Cole is set to make his spring debut Wednesday, Carlos Rodón will not appear in a Grapefruit League game before the Yankees break camp.

The left-hander, returning from October elbow surgery to shave down a bone spur and remove loose bodies, is scheduled to throw another live batting practice Thursday — while Fried and Ryan Weathers start the two split-squad games that day — building up to two innings and 35 pitches.

But by the time he pitches again in five days, the Yankees will be in Arizona playing a final exhibition against the Cubs before Opening Day.

Still, Rodón remains on track to only miss a few weeks if everything goes well.

“I would expect him back at some point in April,” Boone said.

Boone did not want to touch whether David Bednar would be available to pitch for Team USA in Tuesday’s WBC final, but it did not sound as if that would be the case.

The Yankees closer would have been pitching for the third time in five days, and had already racked up some high-stress innings with 68 pitches across three outings from March 10-15, all of which Boone acknowledged.

Yerry De los Santos has not pitched in 10 days as he tended to a family situation, but he returned to camp Tuesday. … The Yankees reassigned RHP Bradley Hanner to minor league camp. They now have 49 players left in big league camp.

We have a new World Baseball Classic champion to add to the list of winners of this now-prestigious tournament. It also just so happens that the current face of the Atlanta Braves helped to push the team and his country to the winner’s circle. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Venezuela completed their dark-horse run by taking down Team USA 3-2 in order to win the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Acuña contributed to the cause on Tuesday night with a hit and a walk over the course of three plate appearances. He didn’t score a run in this one but he finished the tournament with 10 runs scored along with seven hits, seven walks and two stolen bases. That’s good for a slash line of .269/.424/.538 with an OPS of .962 over the small sample size of tournament baseball.

Two of those seven hits were homers but there was no bigger hit for Venezuela in this tournament than the clutch RBI double from Eugenio Suárez that regained the lead for Venezuela after Bryce Harper hit a clutch homer of his own to tie the game up in the bottom of the eighth inning.

Simply put, this was an incredible game of baseball where both teams treated the situation with the magnitude that a winner-take-all game like this deserves. For Team USA, it’s a second-straight run to the Final that ends in disappointment despite the late-game heroics from Harper. For Ronald Acuña Jr. and Venezuela, it’s a defining win for the sport of baseball in that country and that team will surely go down in Venezuelan sports history for pulling off this great run to the title.

For Braves fans, it was certainly encouraging to see Ronald Acuña Jr. going at full-tilt throughout this entire competition and if that translates to the regular season then we should be in for plenty of fun once the season gets underway. Most importantly, Acuña got through this completely healthy and he looks like he’s firing on all cylinders. He was already a World Series champion but now he’s a World Baseball Classic champion — and this time, he was on the field to do something about it.

Congratulations to Ronald Acuña Jr. and Team Venezuela on a job well done throughout the tournament and congratulations to everybody involved in this year’s WBC for putting on an incredible show. Let’s do this again in three-to-four years, right?

Venezuela outlasted the United States in a pitching duel, with Eugenio Suárez providing the tournament-winning RBI double in the ninth inning of a 3-2 victory Tuesday night in Miami to win the 2026 World Baseball Classic.

Venezuela, which clinched a berth in the 2028 Summer Olympics by reaching the WBC semifinals, wins its first World Baseball Classic by winning six of its seven games.

Eduardo Rodriguez, the Arizona Diamondbacks left-hander, pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings with four strikeouts, allowing only a single and walk. Team USA remained scoreless until Bryce Harper hit a game-tying, two-run home run in the eighth.

Team USA only scored two runs in each of its final two games. That got them to the precipice of winning the tournament thanks to strong pitching of their own, holding the mighty Dominican Republic lineup on Sunday to just one run. They only allowed three runs on Tuesday, two of them off New York Mets starter Nolan McLean.

Wilyer Abreu homered in the fifth for Venezuela. Cubs closer Daniel Palencia closed out the win for Venezuela with a perfect ninth inning with two strikeouts.

Will Smith started for the second straight game at catcher for The United States, but was 0-for-3 with a strikeout in the title game.

Smith during the tournament played in four of seven games, including catching in both the semifinal and championship game. He had three hits in 13 at-bats, including a double, RBI, and two walks, hitting .231/.313/.308.

How all Dodgers did during the WBC

Shohei Ohtani homered in three of his four games, tying for most in the WBC along with Vinnie Pasquantino (Italy), Junior Caminero (Dominican Republic), and Jarren Duran (Mexico). Ohtani had six hits in 13 at-bats with a double and five walks, hitting .462/.611/1.231 with seven RBI and six runs scored.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched in two games and allowed two runs in 6 2/3 innings, with seven strikeouts and four walks, with a 2.70 ERA. He won Japan’s tournament opener, and got a no-decision in the quarterfinal loss to Venezuela.

Edwin Díaz pitched a scoreless inning in each of his three appearances for Puerto Rico, including a save on March 9 against Cubs. Díaz struck out seven, walked one, hit a batter, and allowed one hit.

Hyeseong Kim hit a two-run home run during pool play for Korea, but that was his only hit in 12 at-bats during the tournament. He also walked twice, stole a base, scored two runs, and drove in three, hitting .083/.214/.333 in four games.

Minor league third baseman Jake Gelof had two hits in 11 at-bats in four games for Israel during pool play, with a double and walk, hitting .182/.250/.273 with three RBI and one run scored.

It had been a rough World Baseball Classic for Bryce Harper, but that all changed with one swing of the bat.

Team USA trailed Venezuela 2-0 with two outs and a runner on in the bottom of the eighth inning. On the second pitch of the at-bat, Venezuelan pitcher Andrés Machado left a changeup over the heart of the plate. Harper jumped on it, sending it a towering 432 feet to deep center field for a no-doubt home run to tie the game.

Harper looked towards the United States dugout, flipped his bat in the air and pointed at the flag on his sleeve as he rounded third.

BRYCE HARPER TIES THE GAME FOR TEAM USA! pic.twitter.com/zRVBaURBTm

— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 18, 2026

It was a much-needed shot of life for the Americans, who had been silenced by Eduardo Rodriguez and Venezuela's trio of relievers — Eduard Bazardo, Angel Zerpa and José Buttó — to that point.

Aaron Judge struck out looking on the next at-bat, and Venezuela re-took the lead on an RBI double from Eugenio Suárez in the top of the ninth. Venezuela held on to win 3-2.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Watch Bryce Harper home run that tied WBC championship