The Netherlands’ amazing run at the World Baseball Classic has come to an end. We gave Venezuela a hard time in yesterday’s first game in round two, eventually losing 3-1. Interestingly, we outhit them 6-3; in the first round, the Dominican Republic got more hits than we did, but lost twice. In case of Venezuela, it did of course help that their hits were a triple and two homeruns.

The US lost their first second-round game against Puerto Rico, so they met us today in the losers bracket. The winner would get another chance to reach the semi-finals, while the loser would head home. We did what we could, not even giving up down 8-0 in the seventh inning, but it wasn’t enough. Team USA overpowered us early on and kept that lead with some solid pitching. Nevertheless, we still produced twelve hits—by far our most offensive game yet. The US also got twelve hits, but that total included more extra base hits.

There was a curious moment in the top of the eighth. Brian Engelhardt hammered the first pitch from reliever Matt Lindstrom for the first Dutch homerun of the tournament. Lindstrom threw his next pitch behind the batter, bringing some of our players out of the dugout. Not even the American commentators understood why Lindstrom did that.

Order was restored and the game finished without any further incidents. Congratulations to the US on a good game and good luck the rest of the way.

[Update: Lindstrom admitted he intentionally threw behind Vince Rooi, because he felt Engelhardt spent too much time admiring his homerun before starting around the bases. Lindstrom is catching a lot of heat from American fans for that message pitch. Readers commenting on MLB.com's article call him arrogant, classless, a loser, a cry baby, and more. They also note Adam Dunn stood much longer admiring his homer than Engelhardt did. Tom Verducci, of Sports Illustrated, also severely questions what Lindstrom did. Additionally, he takes a stance against Team USA manager Davey Johnson for trying to cover for Lindstrom by saying the pitch got away from him, and against home plate umpire Bruce Dreckman for not ejecting Lindstrom. I'll just say it feels good to have pretty much the entire US on our side in this matter.]

This entry was posted on Monday, March 16th, 2009 at 03:03 and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.