Tonight Venezuela beat Italy by a score of 4-2 to advance to the championship against the United States. Venezuela played from behind once again trailing 2-0 early in the game. Enguenio Suarez hit a solo home run to make the score 2-1 in favor of Italy. But later in the game sparked by walk to Gleyber Torres Venezuela would rally and score 3 runs to make the score 4-2.

Walks can kill a team as it is an unearned base for the hitter. A pitcher giving up hits it happens but walks are 100 percent on the pitcher. Venezuela ended up walking three batters in a row that led to Italy scoring two runs. And when Venezuela scored their three runs it was started by a leadoff walk. These hurt a lot and need to be limited or you will not win many baseball games.

What Venezuela does very well in both this game and the game against Japan is they played from behind and led comebacks in both games. What this means is that the US can not be satisfied with any lead that they have as Venezuela has proven twice now that they can and will come back against you. For Venezuela to win they will need to attack early and get their starting pitcher out of the game early make the US eat up lots of pitchers in that game. The US will need to get an early lead and keep their foot on the gas if they have any hope of beating this team.

This is shaping up to be one heck of a WBC championship and I believe either team can win it. Both teams have very good strengths and also very visible weaknesses. The winner will be the team who takes advantage of situational baseball the most something that Venezuela has been better at this tournament than the US.

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