US wins against Canada to advance at World Baseball Classic

LOS ANGELES - Agence France-Presse

American Heath Bell waves an American flag to fans after a World Baseball Classic baseball game win against Canada in Phoenix. AP photo

Adam Jones belted the go-ahead two-run double in the eighth and pitcher Heath Bell earned the win as the U.S. rallied to beat Canada 9-4, advancing to the second round of the World Baseball Classic.

The USA fell into a 2-0 hole early and trailed 3-2 after seven innings, but Jones’ double off Canada pitcher Jimmy Henderson put the Americans in front to stay.

Jones finished with three RBI for the USA who eventually broke the game open with another four runs in the ninth.

With the win the Americans win Pool D and will start second round play of the WBC on Tuesday in Miami, where they will face either the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico.

Jonathan Lucroy had an RBI single in the final inning before Eric Hosmer cleared the bases with a double.

Scoreless inning

Bell posted the win with a scoreless seventh inning and then pitcher Steve Cisek got out of bases loaded eighth-inning jam by getting Canadian Tim Smith to ground out to end the inning.

Prior to the March 10 game, officials announced that there would be no further discipline against the Canadian or Mexican players who were involved in a ninth-inning bench-clearing brawl the day before.

Mexico, which appeared to start the fight, had four players ejected. Three more Canadians were tossed during Team Canada’s 10-3 romp which resulted in Mexico being eliminated from the tournament.

Miguel Cabrera smacked four RBIs as Venezuela scored six runs in the fourth inning to beat Spain 11-6 in a Pool C contest earlier Sunday at San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Only national pride was on the line as Venezuela lost any chance of advancing to the second round by losing its first two games to the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico.

Winless Spain will have to go through the qualifying rounds to try to return to this tournament the next time around in 2017.

Spain scored two runs in the fifth on a single by Salomon Manriquez to make it 6-5.

But Venezuela tacked on five more runs - two in the sixth and then three in the eighth as Cabrera and Pablo Sandoval blasted back-to-back homers in front of a crowd of 13,290.