United States routs Cuba to advance to World Baseball Classic final

The United States is one win away from defending its World Baseball Classic title.

And after needing heroics to make it through the quarterfinals, Team USA breezed through its semifinal with a 14-2 win over Cuba in front of a sold-out crowd of 35,799 at Miami’s loanDepot park.

The United States, which won the most recent edition of the tournament in 2017, will face the winner of Monday’s semifinal between Japan and Mexico.

From purely a baseball standpoint, Sunday’s game was a rout.

The United States logged 14 hits, swatted four home runs and blew past an overpowered Cuba team that reached the semifinals for the first time since the inaugural World Baseball Classic in 2006 when the country finished as runner-up.

The United States scored at least one run in seven of the eight innings in which they came to the plate.

“They’re swinging the bats good,” USA manager Mark DeRosa said. “They’re having fun being around each other. They’re passing the baton. They’re not having selfish ABs.”

But this game on this day wasn’t always going to be about baseball, not with the Cuban national team playing in Little Havana. It was the first time the Cuban national team played in Miami and the first time Cuba faced the United States in an international baseball game.

There were protests outside the stadium leading up to first pitch.

Chants of “Patria y Vida” (a rally cry against Cuba’s government that translates to “Homeland and Life”) and “Libertad” (“Freedom”) chants echoed throughout the ballpark.

A protester ran onto the field in the top of the sixth holding up a banner that read, in part, “Libertad Para Los Cubanos.” (“Freedom For Cubans.”). The crowd gave a huge ovation before he was escorted off the field. A second fan charged the field in the seventh inning and a third wearing a Cuban flag around his back in the bottom of the eighth (and was tackled by security as he got close to the mound).

A sign that read “Viva Cuba Libre De Dictadura” (“Long Live Cuba Free From Dictatorship”) temporarily hung over the awning by the Budweiser bar in left-center field.

“Anyone has the right to say whatever they want to say or think. We’re not here to judge anybody,” Cuba manager Armando Johnson said. “We’re just here for baseball, for the sport. That’s what I do. I don’t have to say anything about that. I’m not a police officer or nothing like that. I respect the way of thinking of everyone. That’s what I can tell you about that.”

On the field, though, the game was essentially a one-side affair although the United States actually fell behind 1-0 early. Cuba opened the game with three consecutive infield singles against Adam Wainwright before Alfredo Despaigne drew a bases-loaded walk.

First baseman Paul Goldschmidt hit a two-run home run to left field in the bottom half of the inning to give the U.S. a lead it wouldn’t relinquish and finished the game with four RBI overall.

As Goldschmidt made his way back into the dugout, he went up to Wainright, his teammate with the St. Louis Cardinals for the past four seasons.

“We got you,” Goldschmidt told Wainwright.

That they did.

Shortstop Trea Turner, Team USA’s hero in the quarterfinal with his go-ahead grand slam against Venezuela, hit two more home runs on Sunday — a solo shot to left field in the second to extend the lead to 3-1 and a three-run blast to left-center in the sixth to make the score 12-2.

Turner, the No. 9 hitter for the United States’ superstar-filled lineup, has now hit four home runs this World Baseball Classic — the most by a USA player in a single World Baseball Classic.

“I kept saying every time he went deep, ‘Who is the idiot that’s hitting him ninth?’” DeRosa said with a laugh, “but that’s the way this lineup’s built. So I’m going to leave him alone right now.”

Third baseman Nolan Arenado, whose father is of Cuban heritage and whose grandfather was once a political prisoner of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, had a pair of hits including a single that started a two-run third inning and an RBI triple in the fourth. Arenado left the game after a pitch hit his right hand in the fifth inning; X-rays came back negative.

“There’s a lot of feelings I feel toward it,” Arenado said pregame, also noting that he had “a lot of anxious feelings” about the matchup and that he had “a long discussion” with his family Sunday morning about the game. “I respect them, I respect the players, but we have a job to do. So we got to put that aside and take care of business tonight and then hopefully have a good game and then we can talk about it after.”

Wainwright settled in after the rocky first inning and held Cuba to just the one run over four innings. Miles Mikolas, Wainwright’s teammate with the St. Louis Cardinals, followed with four innings of one-run ball of his own.

Aaron Loup pitched a scoreless ninth to end the game.

And because of the one-two punch of Wainright and Mikolas, DeRosa said he should have all of his bullpen available for the championship game Tuesday.

“My singular focus was, how do we get our bullpen to Tuesday, and we were able to do that,” DeRosa said. “That was the bottom line. How do we get everybody — because we would have had to use Devin [Williams] or [Ryan] Pressly or [Kendall] Graveman. There was a chance those guys wouldn’t be available to us in the championship game [if they pitched Sunday].”