SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Through the first three days of Group A play, Hiram Bithorn Stadium is a place where basic baseball excellence has disappeared. Seriously, if you’re a coach or instructor looking for a video of what not to do to show your players, there are plenty to choose from, both on the basepaths and on the field.
Canada largely avoided the slog during its 8-2 win in its opener against Colombia, putting pressure on its opponents and capitalizing on mistakes. Manager Ernie Whitt said Sunday afternoon: “That’s the priority in every tournament we play. Giving extra outs gives us a chance to score more runs. That obviously adds to the number of pitchers we limit. It’s important to play cleanly.”
A few hours later, after rain delayed the first pitch by about 60 minutes, the Canadians stumbled on a Josh Naylor error in a terrible sixth inning and suddenly their path forward in this tournament was blocked.
They lost 4-3 to Panama, falling 1-1, and then fell 2-0 to Cuba and Puerto Rico, who face off in a decisive matchup on Monday night. Canada is off until Tuesday, when Jordan Balajovic will play against the Group A hosts, while Panama (1-2) will face Colombia (0-3) on Monday, with the winner not having to re-qualify for the next World Baseball Classic.
Pool A play concludes on Wednesday when Canada plays Cuba, and although there is now no room for error, the odds of advancing to the quarterfinals remain very high.
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“Bottom line, we have to win, and we’re going to do it mathematically,” Whitt said. “So our backs are against the wall. We know what to do. Hopefully we can correct some of the problems and get it over with.”
The situation that needed to be put right came in the fateful sixth game when Canada squandered a 2-1 lead in a messy three-point frame.
When retired left-hander James Paxton, who last pitched in the major leagues on Aug. 11, 2024, left with an injury, Jose Ramos, who led off the pitch, walked. After the wind knocked down an Edmundo Sosa rocket that may have landed in the left field stands, Naylor dropped third baseman Abraham Toro’s clean relay with two outs in the inning.
After Luis Castillo’s popout, Miguel Amaya’s grounder slid past second baseman Edouard Julien, who was unable to make the relay and hit. Pinch hitter Ruben Tejada lined a bouncer to center to score the tying run that Otto Lopez kept in the infield, and his relay home was unwisely blocked by Paxton, allowing someone else to cross when an out was possible. Enrique Bradfield Jr. added another ground ball left in the infield. Julien did it with his bare hands but failed to set the stage for the relay.
“I take responsibility for that loss,” Naylor said. “I should have caught that baseball. I didn’t and little things win games. I can’t dwell on it too long. I made a mistake and moved on.”
When Jose Caballero flied out to end the inning, Panama took a 4-2 lead without pushing the ball out of the infield, Paxton bled despite good stuff and a 95, and it was as ugly as it sounds. To further complicate the situation, left-handed pitcher Miguel Cienfuegos, a native of Laval, Quebec, turned the tide in the bottom of the sixth inning by stuffing them with just seven pitches.
“We have to keep fighting,” Paxton said. “You can’t give in to the moment. If you give in to that, you give up six runs. But we kept fighting for every pitch and tried to keep it as close as possible.”
Complicating the situation further was Miguel Cienfuegos, a left-hander from Montreal who had hoped to pitch for Canada but transferred to Panama, where both of his parents are from, and kept the heat by filling just seven pitches and neatly adding a seventh pitch.
“It’s definitely mixed emotions,” Cienfuegos, who reached Triple-A in the Padres system last season, said of the game against Canada. “It was a day I had circled on my calendar for months to prepare for that moment. Who knows if I would have pitched today or not, but the preparation was definitely there. … It honestly felt good because it meant a lot to me, my family, my country and everyone at home.”
After Cienfuegos left, Canada regained momentum in the eighth inning with a tremendous defensive play.
Owen Caissie collected Caballero’s double in left field and fed to Lopez, who fired home to score Bradfield, keeping the deficit at 4-2. In the bottom half, Caissie hit a changeup from Humberto Mejia to score Bo Naylor with a double, but pinch hitter Tyler Black struck out to end the rally.
Josh Naylor had a single and a runner on second in the ninth, but Jared Young ended the game with a strikeout as Canada finished 2-for-10 with runners in scoring position. This included a one-time opportunity with the bases loaded in the 5th inning just before the Panama rally, but it was to no avail.
“It was a big momentum shift after we had a chance to open the game and we didn’t, and all of a sudden the other team had some momentum and they capitalized on it,” Whitt said. “Again, we have to play this game cleanly. You can’t give extra outs and we paid for that.”
Jameson Taillon pitched 3.2 innings of one-run ball and did his part to get Canada off to a good start. He allowed Enrique Bradfield Jr.’s bunt single thrown out by Toro, allowed a walk to Caballero, got a double play ball from Leo Bernal, and escaped safely with a strikeout of Sosa.
It was the first of seven straight Panamanian batters he retired, a streak broken in the fourth inning by Leo Bernal’s hit. Two outs later, he had 58 pitches (the first-round limit was 65) and Antoine Jean took over, giving up back-to-back hits to Christian Bethancourt and Castillo to tie the game at 1-1.
Jamie Barria’s two-out rally in the second half restored Canada’s advantage as they cashed in the go-ahead run on two-out singles by Bo Naylor, Caissie and Denzel Clarke. Abraham Toro’s third RBI of the tournament, a run-scoring double in the second, opened the scoring, but he was stuck there among many opportunities the Canadians failed to capitalize on.
“We should have won or lost the game,” Naylor said. “But next time we go out there, it’s a new day, a new baseball game.”
This calls for clean, tight baseball play that has been rare in Pool A so far.
