Team USA's Bizarre World Baseball Classic Stat Is Bound to Change

American lineup has posted three walks for every strikeout at the WBC.

Team USA faces its toughest test Monday night against Mexico. | Rob Tringali/WBCI/MLB Photos via Getty Images

Team USA has won its first two games at the World Baseball Classic with relative ease, racking up victories over Brazil and Great Britain over the weekend. Both tests proved to have their moments of anxiety, though, before the tournament favorites stepped on the accelerator to leave inferior competition in the dust.

Mark DeRosa's team needed a seven-run ninth inning to provide ample breathing room against Brazil and Great Britain carried a 1-0 lead into the fifth inning before the American lineup woke up to throw some crooked numbers on the scoreboard. That Team USA is scoring 12 runs per contest at this early stage is not a surprise based on a formidable and deep lineup. How they are doing it, however, might be raising some eyebrows.

Despite having some epic fire power, the United States has only two home runs to this point. Aaron Judge wasted no time getting on the board with a two-run shot in the first inning of the opener and Kyle Schwarber's go-ahead shot completely changed the vibe against Great Britain. Brice Turang stroked two doubles against Brazil while Pete Crow-Armstrong and Alex Bregman had one each in Saturday's game.

In short, Team USA is not scoring runs in bunches because they are slugging the ball all about the yard. They are instead scoring because both of the pitching staffs they've faced have failed to throw strikes at all.

Brazil pitchers walked an astounding 17 hitters and Great Britain's arms allowed seven free passes. Through two contests the Americans have worked 24 walks and only struck out eight times, a 3-1 ratio unheard of in the modern game.

Obviously, this is a big positive. Sitting back and relying on a big swing and a dinger to score has been the downfall of many perceived juggernauts. Runs created simply by watching bad ones sail wide and away count the same as those earned on majestic blasts. Moreover, it's a sound strategy in the WBC for a potent side like Team USA to force other countries to rack up the pitch counts and get deeper into their bullpens because they do not have as much depth.

It's also not really sustainable.

Team USA will face its toughest test on Monday night in the form of an unbeaten Mexico team. Paul Skenes will toe the rubber against Manny Barreda, who has all of 2 2/3 innings of MLB experience to his name. If Mexico had a better option to start then they would be using it. There are several decent pieces in their bullpen at the ready to contribute to the goal of getting 27 outs but it will be tough to keep the Americans down.

So perhaps the extremely patient approach will be on display once again tonight—and certainly tomorrow against Italy in a game that might not matter if the United States' ticket to the quarterfinals is already punched.

But going forward in the knockout rounds against deeper and more talented pitching, Team USA is simply not going to be able to relax and walk their way around the bases with the knowledge their next big hit is going to come with runners on board.

It's not a surprise that things have come easy for such a strong lineup at the WBC. Yet no one would ever expect it to be this easy. Nor should anyone expect such outlying trends to continue.

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