*This content was translated by AI.
The U.S. local media are giving harsh evaluations to the Japanese baseball team, which sank after losing 5-8 to Venezuela in the 2026 World Baseball Classic (WBC) quarterfinals. The sophistication of Japanese baseball, which conquered the world in the past, disappeared, and the mound management, which failed to keep up with the flow of modern baseball, eventually caused a "catastrophe," according to the U.S. media.
The Japanese baseball team, led by coach Hirokazu Ibata (51), lost to Venezuela 5-8 in the 2026 WBC quarterfinals at Rondipo Park in Miami, Florida on the 15th (Korea time). He was dragged 0-1 and made it 1-1 and then ran to 5-2 but fell to his knees, allowing a comeback.
With this loss, Japan failed to win the tournament for the second consecutive time and ended the tournament with the same quarterfinal performance as the Korean national baseball team. And since its establishment at the WBC in 2006, it has been humiliated by not reaching the semifinals for the first time in its history. He was the "defending champion," but ended the tournament with the lowest performance ever. In response, Ibata expressed his intention to resign just before heading to Japan from the United States.
The U.S. local media cited Japan's biggest defeat in the WBC as "forgotting what they are good at."
Dylan Hernandez, a reporter for the New York Post who visited the scene, said in an article on the 16th, "In the past, Japan pressured opponents with solid defense, sophisticated operations, and so-called 'small balls'. However, in this tournament, he was only buried in the "big ball (baseball)", led by Shohei Ohtani (32, LA Dodgers). Japan has lost its identity in the name of modernizing baseball. Rather than sticking to basic skills such as bunting and jin-ruta, he self-destructed by imitating Major League-style power baseball," he pointed out.
The most painful point was the composition of the mound in Japan. In the absence of fast-binding pitchers in the Major League, such as Shohei Ohtani and Rocky Sasaki (L.A. Dodgers), the cards chosen by the Japanese bench were "short-term ball control pitchers." The New York Post strongly criticized it as a "recipe for disaster."
"Japan has formed a bullpen consisting of 175 centimeters of short-handed pitchers such as Chihiro Sumida (Seibu Lions) and Hiromi Ito (Nipponham Fighters). In the end, they were hit by a series of come-from-behind home runs by Venezuela's monstrous hitters and blew a 5-2 lead. He has young big pitchers (Sugiyama Kazuki, Yamashita Shunpeita, etc.) who sprinkle nearly 160 kilometers of fastballs, but insists on only sophisticated control He pointed out that he was overwhelmed by power.
Murakami Munetaka, who joined the Chicago White Sox ahead of this season, was also cold-hearted. The article wrote, "Murakami and Sato Teruaki (Hanshin Tigers) admired the American power heater in the Japanese professional baseball (NPB) and chose a batting approach that was not afraid of striking out, but they failed to cope with the major league-class fastball."
In particular, Murakami's contract for a lower-than-expected amount ($34 million for two years) in the process of entering the Major League also analyzed that "the conditions were not good due to strong market doubts about whether he could overcome the fastball of the Major League," proving that Japanese-style power baseball did not work on the world stage.
Finally, the New York Post advised, "We must accept the modern pitching system while maintaining our own strengths." Japanese baseball's elimination from the quarterfinals, which lost its unique weapon while poorly imitating the opponent's power baseball, is more than just an elimination in the United States.
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*This content was translated by AI.
