USA avoids disastrous first inning in semifinal game, a breakdown

Ueno taking the mound for Team USA in the semi-final game against Cuba. Today's breakdown is sponsored by Manscaped Sprints out there, grabs the ball. DeRosa's like, all right, he's ready to go, but they're going to get into trouble in the first inning. He goes two-seam fastball, that's off the plate. 86-85 into Tim Anderson's glove, who's playing second base, usually a shortstop, can't convert the out. Now, that was a decently hard hit ball, but look, it just hit him in the hand instead of the glove. He stays with it nicely, makes the throw, but it pulls Goldie off the bag. If he would have got him, that would have been awesome, and he can't make the tag. So unfortunate break, there's a runner on first. That doesn't get called. I think Ueno wanted it. Another fastball, there's a curveball, fouled away for a strike. Another fastball, Ueno wanted it, but that's below the zone. In the zone, swings over it, two and two. Another curveball, just kind of fouled down. Fastball chopped, Baltimore chopped off the mound. That's a tough play. I've been thinking about this one a lot. I think the only thing he should have done was not touch it at all. I don't think he's got the speed to get there. You're not going to lay out to catch it on the fly. Already hit the ground. You'd have to really run to the spot there. He should just hope it rolls foul, but instead, he picks it up. So another soft hit, and then here's another fastball. You got to make that. I mean, I know you're not young. He's like, oh, hell. Cuba's excited, but this one, if he picks that up, he's thinking double play ball. Maybe he gets more excited than he should have. And now DeRosa's in a bit of a pickle because the way the World Baseball Classic works is there's still MLB players, and the MLB teams, they don't want you to use their relief pitchers two days in a row, and they used a lot of relief pitchers in the last game. He had four available pitchers, three starters, one relief pitcher for this game. He needs outs from his guys. He needs Wayno to go pretty deep into this game, and it's not looking good right now if he's in trouble. So this is a pretty, you know, this is the face of a distraught man, thinking, oh, boy, this is not good. Oh, Wayno's got the bases loaded, and he's kind of pitching away from contact here, goes fastball away, curveball away. The 202 seam, that finds a lot of plate. That's a little cutter off. Fouled away. Now it's three and two. DeRosa's like, jeez, come on, man. We don't got many arms out there. Curveball off the plate for a walk. Cuba's pumped up. They take the lead. You want to talk to him? Go. Tells Pettit to go talk to him. He says, look, man, you're making good pitches. You had three balls that should have found glove, and you had a couple balls that should have been called a strike. You got a good curveball, right? Throw that. They haven't hit it yet. And Wayno says, OK. Andy Pettit told me to throw more curveballs. Do you think so? He's like, well, you got one of the best curveballs in all baseball, so yeah. So that's a curve for a ball. That's a two seamer out. And then that's a curve. Cross up. Things could have gone really wrong, like even more wrong. Look, what if this is a wild pitch and another run scores, and it gets past Smith, but he stays with it. Oh, look at that. Thumb, thumb, finger, gun. Bam. Kind of awkward strike call, but it's there. High fastball. That was big that he chased that. That really helped Wayno out. He says, oh, do it again. What sign did you say? And he said, I said 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 4, 5. Curveball, dude. Didn't you hear what Andy said? Throwing curveballs. 2-2 pitch. Curveball on the ground. Arenado comes straight home. That's a premeditated play. You have to know right away you're going home with that. And Smith did a good job keeping his foot on the bag. Another first pitch. Curveball. That's a pop up. Uh-oh. Who's got it? You got it. I got it. I don't play second a lot. Things could have gone really wrong in this inning. Imagine that. Drops and a run scores, but they catch it. They look at each other. Anderson says, oh, don't worry. I gotcha. Now, curveballs. Wayno's like, I throw good curveballs. They get outs. I should just stick to the curveballs. Another curveball. Ground out to short. That ends the inning. They hold them to one run. Escape the jam. And then the US team goes up and puts up 14 runs. But that was huge for Wayno to get out of that, because of the pitching constraints and because of how just kind of poorly things were going. If the cross-up happens and the drop pop-up happens, you're looking at a disastrous inning. But they were able to clean it up. Clean yourself up using Manscaped. Get 20% off and free shipping with our code JOMBOY at manscaped.com. And enjoy yourself. And also, if you want to subscribe to the channel, that helps us out a lot as well. Goodbye.