Another United States-Canada matchup couldn’t get past Jack Hughes.
As Team USA prepares to take on its rival on Friday in the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic, the Devils star and American Olympic hero in Milan reached out to the sluggers.
“Jack Hughes sent the boys a nice little fire-up message that I put out on their group chat,” manager Mark DeRosa said Thursday during a press conference when asked if he watched the men’s and women’s hockey teams take down Canada in their respective overtime gold medal matches in February.
“I know there are some talks about some hockey jerseys being sent in tomorrow for the guys to wear during BP or out and about in the clubhouse. So yeah, fairly aware of the gold medal run there,” he added.
Hughes scored the game-winning overtime goal against Canada with a few teeth knocked out. The Americans should welcome any luck they can get from the 24-year-old, as they were nearly not in the knockout round at all.
Heading into Team USA’s game against Italy, DeRosa believed his heavily favored squad had already clinched its spot in the quarterfinals.
“Ton of respect for Italy. It’s weird, we want to win this game even though our ticket’s punched to the quarterfinals because Mexico plays Italy actually [Wednesday],” DeRosa said Tuesday morning on MLB Network. “So, the way the schedule lines up, this is an important game for us.”
He went on to manage the game in just that fashion. He started Paul Goldschmidt at first base instead of Bryce Harper, and he slotted Ernie Clement at second base over Brice Turang. He also threw in Ryan Yarbrough for several innings — a play that didn’t pay off in the 8-6 loss to Italy.
On top of that, Team USA didn’t have a spot in the quarterfinals before or after losing to Italy.
Meaning, the Americans’ fate in the tournament was in the hands of the Italy-Mexico game Wednesday night.
“I misspoke,” DeRosa later backtracked after the loss to the Italians. “I was on ‘Hot Stove’ with a couple of buddies today and completely misread the calculations. We knew Mexico was going to play Italy, and running all the numbers with if we lost tonight with the runs allowed and runs scored and outs. So, I just misspoke.”
Fortunately for DeRosa and the Americans, Italy’s 9-1 victory over Mexico kept them alive.
While Mexico winning would not have necessarily been bad news for the U.S., it would have come down to crunching numbers with the tiebreak rules. If Mexico had won but failed to score four runs or fewer, the Americans would have been out.
Team USA can sigh in relief as it now prepares to face Canada, which went 3-1 in pool play and finished atop Pool A over Puerto Rico via tiebreaker.