Quinton Fesq
The Dominican Republic’s World Baseball Classic run is over, ended by a strike call that wasn’t a strike. Juan Soto and the Dominicans fell 2-1 to Team USA in Sunday night’s semifinal at LoanDepot Park in Miami, but the final out will be the thing people remember longest, not the result.
With 2 outs in the bottom of the eighth and the tying run on base, shortstop Geraldo Perdomo worked a 7-pitch at-bat against U.S. closer Mason Miller before home plate umpire Cory Blaser called a full-count slider strike three. The pitch was clearly below the zone. The crowd of 36,337, heavily pro-Dominican, erupted. Perdomo told Blaser directly that the umpire knew it was a ball. The game was over anyway.
Soto had been hit by a similar call one inning earlier, caught looking on a slider that also missed low. Neither call was close. The automated ball-strike system that MLB is debuting this season, specifically designed to prevent moments like these, is not used in the WBC. The irony was not lost on anyone in the building. Dominican Republic general manager Nelson Cruz put it plainly after the game: “You lost by inches.”
“I knew 100% it was a ball,” Perdomo told ESPN.
Soto, for his part, refused to let the ending define the tournament. Talking to ESPN’s Jeff Passan after the game, he kept the focus on what the Dominican Republic actually showed over the course of the competition.
“We showed the world who’s the best team in baseball,” Soto said. “That’s all I got to say.”
Juan Soto’s 2026 WBC by the Numbers
That confidence was not unfounded. Soto finished the tournament with a .261 batting average, a .393 on-base percentage, a .522 slugging percentage and a .915 OPS across 6 games. He hit 2 home runs, drove in 4, stole 1 base and drew 5 walks. The walk total is the most Soto thing possible. Even in a tournament with no long-term stakes and a compressed schedule, he was working counts and making pitchers earn every out they got.
The .915 OPS looks modest next to what he did in the 2023 WBC, when he slashed .400/.500/1.000 in 4 games for a 1.500 OPS that bordered on unfair. But context matters. This was a deeper, longer run through a gauntlet of elite pitching, including a semifinal against an American bullpen built to close out ballgames. Soto producing at a near-.900 OPS level in that environment is not a disappointment. It is what it is.
He also set the tone for a Dominican lineup that broke the WBC record for home runs in a single tournament. Junior Caminero’s first-inning shot off Paul Skenes gave the D.R. the early lead Sunday night before the American offense answered with home runs from Gunnar Henderson and Roman Anthony. After that, neither offense did much of anything, and the bullpens took over. It was exactly the kind of elite, taut baseball the WBC produces at its best, right up until the ending muddied it.
What This Means for the Mets
New York Mets fans watching Soto in the WBC got a reminder of what he brings that goes beyond raw numbers. The approach does not waver. The at-bats do not get shorter under pressure. Even in a loss, facing elite relievers in an elimination game, he drew 2 walks and made the other team work for every out they recorded against him.
He is heading into his second season in Queens off a 2025 campaign where he hit 43 home runs, drove in 105, posted a .921 OPS and stole 38 bases. Spring training numbers are meaningless, but the WBC showing confirms nothing has changed in his approach. The Mets open their season in a few weeks and their best player just spent the last several days playing meaningful baseball at the highest intensity level possible.
That is not nothing.
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