With big swings and a steady bullpen, Venezuela upsets Ohtani and Japan in WBC

Jordan McPherson, Miami Herald on Mar 15, 2026

Published in Baseball

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MIAMI — Omar Lopez didn’t have to give a pregame speech Saturday. The Venezuelan manager and his team already knew the challenge ahead of it in its World Baseball Classic quarterfinal. It knew it would have to take out defending tournament champion Japan and one of the sport’s best players in Shohei Ohtani if it wanted a chance to win the tournament itself for the first time.

“We all know what is at stake and what to do tonight,” Lopez said pregame. “Sometimes those speeches are useless because they know what to do in the game.”

And in the end, in a heavyweight battle lived up to its billing, Venezuela overcame an early three-run deficit to upset Japan, 8-5, at loanDepot park in front of a sellout crowd of 34,548 to advance to the semifinal round of the tournament for just the second time in the country’s history.

Wilyer Abreu dealt the decisive blow with a three-run home run in the sixth inning against relief pitcher Hiromi Itoh. It was Venezuela’s third home run of the night, each building upon each other until reaching the crescendo.

Venezuela will face Italy in the semifinals on Monday at loanDepot park (8 p.m., FS1). Italy advanced with an 8-6 win over Puerto Rico on Saturday at Houston’s Daikin Park. Japan, meanwhile, is eliminated from the World Baseball Classic prior to the semifinals for the first time in six iterations of the tournament — Japan has won three times and made the semifinals the other two times.

“If you want to win, if you want to be the champ, you have to prove that you are the best,” Lopez said Thursday. “The only way to do that is to control whatever you can do, whatever is in your hands.”

Venezuela took matters into its own hands Saturday.

Ronald Acuna Jr. obliterated a Yoshinobu Yamamoto fastball over the heart of the plate two pitches into the game and sent it 401 feet to right-center field for a leadoff home run. He spent 23.63 seconds trotting around the bases, yelling in excitement before beating his chest as he stomped on home plate with his teammates waiting to greet him.

It sent a message: Venezuela wasn’t just going to land the first punch; it was going to punch all night.

Ohtani, Japan’s superstar who is a four-time MLB MVP and was the MVP of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, tied the game with a leadoff home run of his own in the bottom of the first — smashing a Ranger Suarez slider that barely clipped the bottom of the strike zone and sending it 427 feet to center field. It marked the first game in World Baseball Classic history that each team opened with a leadoff home run.

Venezuela then took a brief 2-1 lead after opening the second inning with back-to-back doubles from Ezequiel Tovar and Gleyber Torres against Yamamoto, who settled in after that to hold Venezuela to just the two runs over four innings of work.

That allowed Japan to take a 5-2 lead with a four-run third inning via a Teruaki Sato RBI double and Shota Morishita three-run home run — all of which came after Suarez intentionally walked Ohtani.

A Maikel Garcia two-run home run to left-center field in the fifth inning against Chihiro Sumida cut Venezuela’s deficit to one.

And then Abreu gave his country the lead for good in the sixth with his three-run shot.

Venezuela added insurance in the eighth when Tovar doubled and scored on a failed pickoff attempt from Japan reliever Atsuki Taneichi.

Stellar pitching from Venezuela’s bullpen — Eduard Bazardo (1/3 inning), Enmanuel De Jesus (2 1/3 inning), Jose Butto (2/3 inning), Angel Zerpa (one inning), Andres Machado (one inning) and Daniel Palencia (one inning) combined for 6 1/3 shutout innings — ensured Japan’s offense remained stagnant following its third-inning outburst.

Perhaps most impressive: Ohtani struck out in each of his first two at-bats against Venezuela’s relievers.

He whiffed on a De Jesus cutter outside the strike zone in the fourth inning. He was caught looking at a called third strike from Zerpa in the seventh. Ohtani had not struck out in any of his first 15 plate appearances of the tournament prior to this.

And then in the ninth, Ohanti popped out to Tovar to end the game.

Venezuela took matters into its own hands.

And it pulled off perhaps the biggest win of the tournament so far as a result.