If Team Israel is going to have to make another miracle run, it will have to start a day late.
Fourth-seeded Venezuela, one of the favorites to win the World Baseball Classic, beat Israel 11-3 on Saturday evening, scoring four runs in the first inning and never trailing.
“It was just all Venezuela,” Team Israel manager Brad Ausmus acknowledged at the post-game press conference in Miami.
Ausmus said that the team might have to win all three of its remaining games to advance to the second round but first needed to win its next one, on Sunday.
“We have Nicaragua in front of us,” Ausmus said. “I don’t like putting the cart in front of the horse, so that’s the focus.”
He expects the team to bounce back from the defeat.
“That’s the one thing about baseball players. We have games on almost every day,” he said at the press conference. “This one will be flushed, and we’ll be ready.”
With the victory, Venezuela moved to 2-0, having defeated the Netherlands, 6-2, on Friday.
On Friday night, Israel Baseball posted photos of the team lighting candles for the Sabbath and making the blessings over wine and challah. “This time tomorrow we’ll be facing Venezuela in our first game of the 2026 World Baseball Classic,” it wrote. “But first we light candles and observe the day of rest.”
During the game, the team posted that “as a great rabbi once said, ‘It ain’t over til it’s over.’ All we need here is a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a bloop and a blast.”
Though the game was played in Miami, the contest felt like a home game for the Venezuela players, who had a large majority of the crowd behind them. No wonder, as more than 100,000 Venezuelans call the area home, many of them in the Miami suburb of Doral.
“It is without question a playoff atmosphere,” Ausmus said during a pre-game press conference. “The energy is up. The adrenaline is up. You hope they control it. But it’s fun. It really is.”
Venezuela starting pitcher Enmanuel De Jesus, a member of the Detroit Tigers organization, struck out four of the first six batters he faced on just 20 pitches.
Team Israel countered with Ben Simon, of the New York Mets organization, who reached the high 90s on his fastball but lasted just five batters. He walked leadoff batter Ronald Acuña Jr. (Atlanta Braves), who came around to score on a one-out double by Luis Arraez (San Francisco Giants) past diving centerfielder Harrison Bader, his Giants teammate.
Salvador Perez (Kansas City Royals) then singled home Arraez, scored ahead of a home run by Eugenio Suárez (Cincinnati Reds), and Simon was done for the night after 27 pitches.
De Jesus retired the first 14 batters, striking out half of them, before giving up a triple down the right-field line to Garrett Stubbs (Philadelphia Phillies) with two outs in the fifth inning.
Matt Mervis (Washington Nationals) then hit a slow roller to the right side of the infield, and when second baseman Gleyber Torres (Detroit Tigers) failed to barehand it, Team Israel had its second hit and first run.
Venezuela quickly got that run back on a home run by Arraez in the bottom of the inning. In the top of the sixth, RJ Schreck (Toronto Blue Jays), homered to right field for Team Israel.
But in the last of the sixth inning, Venezuela used three walks by free agent pitcher Daniel Federman, a two-run single by Maikel Garcia (Royals), who had struck out during his three previous at bats, and a three-run round-tripper by Arraez—his second home run of the night—to put the game out of reach.
Bader’s solo home run in the ninth ended Team Israel’s scoring, though two other batters reached base that inning.
“The one real positive takeaway is we swung the bat a little bit better as the game went on,” Ausmus said at the press conference. “We saw some hitting in the last inning. There is something to be said about guys getting comfortable in this atmosphere, getting that first hit out of the way. So hopefully that kind of carries on.”
In 2017, when Israel won all of its pool games to advance to the second round, it rolled off four straight victories before losing. In 2023, it won its first game before losing three in a row, including 5-1 to Venezuela.
Simon got the start while Ausmus reserved his most experienced pitcher, Dean Kremer (Baltimore Orioles), to start Sunday against Nicaragua, the only team Israel defeated in 2023.
With the top two teams in the five-team pool advancing to the next round, Israel couldn’t afford to go down 0-2 with another of the top seeds, Dominican Republic (No. 2), scheduled for Monday.
“There is some strategy involved with who pitches which game,” Ausmus said at the pre-game press conference.
He acknowledged how strong the Dominican Republic was, but Israel upset the third-, fourth- and fifth-ranked teams in 2017.
“Obviously there’s some very good teams in the division, the Dominican probably being the favorite if you were looking at it from a roster perspective,” Ausmus said before the game. “But it’s baseball, and we don’t have to win eight out of 10 or even four out of seven.”
In fact, just one key hit can make the difference, said catcher C.J. Stubbs (Blue Jays).
“In this tournament style it really takes one swing, one big pitch and riding off that momentum,” he said at a pre-game press conference. “As early as we can get that going, it will help us propel into the next round.”
