MIAMI — Team USA walked into loanDepot Park on Tuesday night with a roster worth more than $300 million. They had three-time AL MVP Aaron Judge. They had two-time NL MVP Bryce Harper. They had the deepest bullpen in WBC history.
They left with a 3-2 loss to Venezuela, their second straight WBC final defeat by the same score, and a pile of questions that will follow them into the 2026 MLB season.
The debate over who shoulders the blame has already consumed baseball. Was it Aaron Judge, the Yankees captain who went silent at the plate when his team needed him most? Or was it Mark DeRosa, the manager whose decisions throughout the WBC tournament drew relentless criticism?
Judge goes cold in the WBC’s biggest game
WBC
Judge was named Team USA’s captain before the WBC and carried the American flag during Tuesday’s elaborate pregame ceremony. He was the face of this team. He was supposed to be its engine.
He finished the WBC final 0-for-4 with two strikeouts. In the first inning, Venezuela starter Eduardo Rodriguez struck him out looking on a cutter while fans chanted “Finish him!” In the sixth, with Harper on base and two outs, Judge grounded out to third to kill a rally.
Aaron Judge is very likable but man, that narrative only grows.
For the WBC tournament as a whole, Judge hit .261 with two home runs and five RBIs. Solid numbers in a vacuum. But in the knockout round, when the stage grew, his bat shrank. Team USA scored just four runs in its final two WBC games. All four came on home runs. Judge did not have one of them.
See THATS a game you can actually criticize Aaron Judge for. Took two meatballs in a 2-0 and 3-1 count.
The bigger issue was the lineup around him. Team USA went 3-for-30 in the WBC final with 10 strikeouts. Kyle Schwarber went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts. Only two Americans recorded hits: Harper (two) and Brice Turang (one single).
DeRosa’s decisions fuel the fire
The criticism of DeRosa did not start with the WBC final. It built all tournament long.
Gunnar Henderson was the hottest hitter on Team USA’s roster. He led the team with a 1.358 OPS and hit the game-tying home run in the WBC semifinal against the Dominican Republic. Yet for the WBC championship game against a left-handed starter in Eduardo Rodriguez, DeRosa benched Henderson in favor of Alex Bregman.
Bregman had gone 2-for-11 (.182) with a .694 OPS in the WBC tournament. The move baffled fans and media alike.
Then there was Tarik Skubal. One of the best pitchers on the planet, Skubal joined Team USA for the knockout round but never threw a pitch. He had pulled himself from the team after a pool play outing against Great Britain, yet had recently thrown over 60 pitches in a Tigers spring training game. His absence from the WBC pitching plan in the semifinal and final raised questions DeRosa never fully answered.
The Mason Miller decision that haunts DeRosa
The decision that will define DeRosa’s WBC tenure came in the ninth inning. With the game tied 2-2 after Harper’s 432-foot home run in the eighth, DeRosa sent Garrett Whitlock to the mound instead of closer Mason Miller.
Whitlock walked Luis Arraez to start the inning. Pinch runner Javier Sanoja stole second. Eugenio Suarez doubled home the go-ahead run. Venezuela led 3-2, and Daniel Palencia sealed the WBC title in the bottom of the ninth.
DeRosa said after the game that he was honoring a request from the San Diego Padres. “Had we taken the lead, he was coming in, but I wasn’t going to bring him into a tie game,” DeRosa said of Miller.
The explanation landed poorly. Miller had thrown just 22 pitches in the WBC semifinal against the Dominican Republic. He had been dominant all tournament, topping 100 mph regularly. Fans online called the decision inexplicable. Some called for a “lifetime ban.”
DeRosa blames team, pivots to WBC reform
USA Baseball
DeRosa insisted the WBC loss was not about managerial mistakes.
“I don’t think there was a mistake tonight,” he said. “I just don’t think we got any, we didn’t put any pressure on them offensively.”
He praised McLean’s effort. “I thought Nolan McLean pitched his tail off. We were not prepared for him to go five. We were thinking he’d give us three, he’d give us four and we were gonna go right to the bullpen and see where the game was at. That’s a testament to him.”
Mark DeRosa says he didn't expect Nolan McLean to pitch into the 5th inning tonight
"We were thinking he'd give us 3, he'd give us 4, and we were going to go right to the bullpen and see where the game was at. That's a testament to him, he had unbelievable stuff tonight" pic.twitter.com/KinFYxUPbQ
DeRosa also used the postgame to push for structural change. He suggested moving the WBC to the All-Star break in July.
“They would be more prepared and more dialed in, and we’d be dealing with way less restrictions and way less guidelines on the pitching if it was moved to midseason,” DeRosa said. “No question about it.”
The timing of the proposal struck critics as deflection. The WBC had just delivered its most-watched, most electric edition ever. Changing the calendar was not the reason Team USA went 3-for-30.
Where the blame truly falls for Team USA’s WBC collapse
The honest answer is that there is plenty to go around. Judge was the captain who did not produce when it mattered. DeRosa was the manager who benched his hottest bat, kept his best reliever in the bullpen during a tie game and could not coax production from a $300 million roster.
Two things can be true:
1. Aaron Judge disappears in big moments at times 2. Aaron Judge is undisputedly a top 2 player in baseball
Team USA has now lost back-to-back WBC finals by identical 3-2 scores. They fell to Japan in 2023 and to Venezuela in 2026. The Americans have won just one WBC title in six tournaments, back in 2017.
For Judge, the sting is personal. He returns to Yankees spring training without the WBC championship he chased all month. For DeRosa, the calls for his removal as Team USA’s manager had already started before the final out landed.
Venezuela’s players danced on the field. Team USA walked off it. The WBC’s greatest roster ever assembled produced its most painful silence.
