Adam Wainwright powerfully defends Mark DeRosa after near-Team USA disaster

The baseball world has been on fire over the last few days after Team USA dropped their final group stage matchup of the World Baseball Classic to Team Italy, putting their hopes of advancing in the hands of Team Italy and Team Mexico on Wednesday night.

USA ended up advancing, but the source of the controversy came from comments made by Team USA manager Mark DeRosa prior to that game against Team Italy, in which he stated that he wanted to "win this game even though our ticket's punched to the quarterfinals", implying he was unaware that USA could still miss out on advancing if they lost that game.

DeRosa, following the loss to Team Italy, told reporters that he had mispoken, and those comments brought on a whole other firestorm of criticism from across the internet.

In the aftermath of those events, former St. Louis Cardinals ace Adam Wainwright had publicly come to the defense of his former Team USA manager and former teammate.

Adam Wainwright made it very clear that he's not buying the drama surrounding Mark DeRosa's Team USA controvery.

Wainwright has called some of the WBC games this tournament and took to X early on Thursday morning to voice his support for DeRosa.

Wainwright made it very clear that he believed DeRosa was qualified to be the manager of Team USA, stating his own experience playing for him in 2023 and the kind of winsome personality that DeRosa has, which has upped the talent playing for the team this year. He then picked apart the idea that DeRosa would not have known the situation Team USA was in, given the fact that he was surrounded by other Team USA players, staff, and constant media attention that would have reminded him of those stakes.

Third, Wainwright was quick to point out that the lineup changes DeRosa made (like starting Paul Goldschmidt, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Ernie Clement, and Gunnar Henderson over Bryce Harper, Alex Bregman, Bryon Buxton, and Alex Bregman) all ended up being productive moves in that game. Crow-Armstrong had two home runs, Henderson added another, and both Clement and Goldschmidt got hits in the game. Wainwright pointed to the fact that Team USA gave up eight runs in the game as their main issue, not the changes that DeRosa decided to make.

DeRosa did take another opportunity to refute the narrative that has been thrown out about him, confirming he was aware of all of the scenarios despite what social media has been saying.

At the end of the day, Team USA is going to the knockout stages, and DeRosa continues to affirm the stance that he mispoke while no one has come out to refute that. The best that Team USA can do at this point is move on from the fiasco and hope that they can go on to win the whole tournament.