Team USA wins Silver, Smyly Continues to Impress

Team USA lost the Pan Am baseball gold medal final on Tuesday, falling 2-1 to Canada. Canada scored twice in the top of the sixth inning and held off Team USA over the final four frames to win 2-1. Team USA dropped to 3-2 for the tournament and 10-6 overall for the season–including the IBAF Baseball World Cup in Panama. However, Tuesday marked the fourth consecutive Pan Am silver medal for the United States and its 10th Pan Am silver overall.

Team USA manager Ernie Young — a five-time USA Baseball alum and current West Michigan Whitecaps manager– said that he could not have been prouder of his team following the game in an interview over at the USA baseball homepage.

“Our guys played their hearts out,” Young said. “I wanted so bad for those guys to win a gold medal. We just came up one run short. I’m proud of them. They came a long way. We didn’t play well in Panama at first, but we got better and carried it over to the Pan Ams. We lost two games here — both by one run. They were great ball games.”

Drew Smyly was originally the Detroit Tigers lone representative until recent draft pick James McCann was added to the roster. McCann appeared in just one game during the tournament and had a pinch-hit double with a run scored in the USA’s 20-2 win over the Dominican Republic. The real story though was the continued dominant ways of Tigers prospect Drew Smyly. He did not allow a run in his three starts in the World Cup and Pan Am Games, going 2-0 with 17 shutout innings and 17 strikeouts. He scattered ten hits and allowed just one extra-base hit over that span. He continues to limit walks–just one–and did not allow a home run either.

The 22-year-old southpaw was highly regarded as a solid back-end starter that shouldn’t require much time to reach the majors. Scouts also commonly tossed around words like “consistent” and “sure thing” when they described him. After watching him in Lakeland and seeing how well he’s handled the promotion to AA-Erie and the Pan-Am Games I’m honestly in awe. I’d like to say that Drew Smyly is as advertised but I honestly believe that would be cutting him short. Perhaps his ceiling is a bit higher than all of the “experts” predicted!

—

Like what you see here and want to stay informed on the happenings at MCB? Make sure to follow me on twitter @ JAYRC_MCB and grab our RSS feed.