Don't scapegoat Aaron Judge for Team USA’s potential WBC collapse

In the wake of Team USA's shocking loss to Italy at the World Baseball Classic on Tuesday night — one that leaves a star-studded roster suddenly on the verge of failing to even make it out of pool play — it's understandable for an angry nation to want someone to blame. And it just so happens that the lowest-hanging fruit is a guy baseball fans love to blame anyway: Aaron Judge, the U.S. captain who struck out to end the game as the tying run.

I'm not going to act like Judge is totally innocent here. If you want to be considered the best hitter on Earth and the leader of your national team, those things come with heightened expectations, and falling short with the game (and potentially the tournament) on the line is inarguably a tough look. And I'm also not going to act like I don't understand where Judge gets his reputation as a guy who comes up small in big spots: This is the same player who slashed .160/.270/.378 with 45 strikeouts across 31 postseason games from 2020-2024; even as a Yankees fan, his track record became harder and harder to defend.

But while everyone's busy getting their jokes off, it still deserves to be said that Judge has actually played well in this WBC overall — and if Team USA does in fact get sent packing, he won't be anywhere near the biggest reason why.

Aaron Judge isn't the reason Team USA lost to Italy

Sure, Judge is the one who made the final out, and he had a chance to rewrite this team's story with one swing in the ninth inning on Tuesday night. But the only reason the U.S. was even in that spot — against an Italian team made up of mostly guys that USA Baseball had decided weren't good enough to play for them — is because the so-called greatest team in American history laid an egg at the worst possible time. If you want to point the finger at somebody, there are far better candidates than Judge.

Mark DeRosa

You can start with the manager, who apparently didn't even know that his team had yet to actually clinch a spot in the quarterfinals. And he certainly managed like this was a glorified exhibition.

How else do you explain starting Will Smith, Ernie Clement and Paul Goldschmidt while leaving guys like Cal Raleigh, Alex Bregman, Brice Turang and Bryce Harper on the bench? How else do you explain his decision to let soft-tossing lefty Ryan Yarbrough wear it for multiple innings, turning a surmountable deficit into a 5-0 — and then an 8-0 — hole? How else do you explain the fact that he was seemingly about to hand the ball to soon-to-be 38-year-old Clayton Kershaw for the ninth inning rather than Mason Miller, when WBC tiebreaker rules make every run allowed critical?

DeRosa has been an admirable recruiter and cheerleader for USA Baseball. But his complete lack of managing experience reared its head at the worst possible time, both in how he prepared his team for an all-important game and for the decisions he made once the game began. The U.S. should still have beaten Italy in any configuration, but DeRosa looked overwhelmed on the international stage.

The entire pitching staff

Of course, none of those choices would have loomed quite as large had American starter Nolan McLean not laid an egg. McLean is an incredibly exciting young pitcher, one who should be in for an excellent 2026 season with the New York Mets, but he was downright bad on Tuesday night. His struggles against left-handed hitters were exposed by a lefty-heavy Italian lineup, resulting in three runs on two walks and two homers allowed in just three innings of work.

The runs were bad enough, but failing to give the U.S. more length — in the team's second game in as many days — meant that DeRosa needed to cobble together six innings from a bullpen he was already worried about overextending (you can bet that Major League teams have given him strict marching orders about how much he's allowed to use their pitchers and when). That forced him to try and squeeze multiple innings out of someone like Yarbrough, a fine No. 5 or 6 starter but not someone who should be pitching what could still turn out to be an elimination game.

Yarbrough gave up another two-run homer, and then fellow reliever Brad Keller poured fuel on the fire by turning a would-be double play into an inning-extending error — one that resulted in two more runs that wound up being the difference in the game. Italy's lineup is better than you'd think, with lots of young big-league hitters, but Team USA's pitching simply wasn't good enough on Tuesday night.

Bryce Harper

If you're looking for a big-name hitter to harass based on his WBC performance so far, why not look at Harper instead? He was brought in for a crucial pinch-hitting appearance in the bottom of the eighth inning, representing the tying run with men on the corners and the score at 8-5. But Ron Marinaccio got him to fly out harmlessly to left field to end the rally — and drop Harper's OPS for the tournament to a pathetic .494.

Harper was downright indignant when Phillies president Dave Dombrowski publicly implied he might not be quite the player he was in his prime. At the time, it was easy to take Harper's side in that feud. But now? Well, it sure looks like Dombrowski may have been right. Harper isn't the only U.S. hitter who's failed to show up so far in this competition (Raleigh and Bregman haven't been great either), but his absence looms largest considering his prized place on this roster.

Aaron Judge is the main reason why the U.S. is even still alive in the WBC

Yes, Judge whiffed in his biggest at-bat of the WBC to date. But it's also worth zooming out a little. For the tournament overall, he's slashing .250/.429/.625, with two homers an OPS that ranks fourth on the U.S. roster. And no, it hasn't all just been stat-padding against cupcakes: He set the tone in Team USA's first game against Brazil, and he was a monster in the win over Mexico, going 2-for-3 with two walks and a go-ahead two-run homer.

In fact, it's pretty easy to argue that the U.S. doesn't win the Mexico game without him, in which case their WBC would already be over. That was the best opponent the Americans have faced so far in the tournament, and easily the most hostile environment, and Judge came up huge multiple times to guide his team to a victory.

If Team USA doesn't even make it to the knockout stage, everyone will deserve to have egg on their face. But Judge's reputation precedes him a somewhat ridiculous degree at this point. He was great in the playoffs last year, and he's done his part to get the U.S. where they need to go in this tournament. One strikeout doesn't change that, and it certainly doesn't absolve who's really to blame for this potential collapse.