The Dominican Republic’s Hitters Are Dangerous, But They Haven’t Really Been Tested Yet

MIAMI — Through the first two games of the World Baseball Classic, the Dominican Republic had scored 24 runs, recorded 22 hits, and drawn 18 walks. Fifteen of those 24 runs had come on the team’s seven home runs. Collectively, the Dominican hitters were slashing .361/.506/.754; their 1.260 OPS was two points better than Babe Ruth’s was in 1927. They couldn’t possibly keep this up.

They cooled off some in Monday afternoon’s 10-1 win over Israel, lowering that slash line to a pedestrian .319/.488/.692. Those slackers.

Obviously, these numbers are staggering. Across three games, the Dominican squad has scored 34 runs and tallied 29 hits, nine home runs, and 29 walks; they’ve struck out just 13 times. Their OPS is now 1.180, slightly better than Ruth’s career mark of 1.164.

How can an opposing team possibly hope to contain them?

“The information to get them out is on computers across baseball,” said Israel manager Brad Ausmus. “The execution of the pitches to get them out is the most important part, and with a lot of them, it’s very difficult because their weaknesses are small. A guy like Juan Soto, he’s going to make you pay if you miss, and there aren’t a lot of places you can go to get him out. They have a lot of guys that are similar.”

Soto, whose walk-off homer in Sunday’s 12-1 win over the Netherlands sparked the wildest mercy-rule celebration in history, was one of the few Dominican hitters who Ausmus’ staff silenced on Monday; Israel’s pitchers limited Soto to just one walk in his five times up. Those similar guys, though? They absolutely raked.

The fatal blow came early, when Fernando Tatis Jr. batted with the bases loaded and two outs in the top of the second inning. He unloaded on a 1-2 changeup from lefty Ryan Prager that caught way too much of the plate and sent it 400 feet to left field for his first home run of the tournament. The grand slam was the team’s first hit of the day — following four walks, including one to Geraldo Perdomo with the bases loaded directly before Tatis stepped in — and it put the D.R. ahead, 5-0.

Tatis is so locked in right now. With a career walk rate of 10.0%, he is not known for his patience, but he has been more than willing to set the table for the thumpers behind him. He’s drawn five walks in 13 plate appearances this WBC; opposing pitchers have gotten him out only four times in three games. Overall, he’s slashing .500/.692/1.000.

For the most part, it seems that opposing pitchers have been trying to force the D.R.’s hitters to get themselves out on pitches outside the zone, hoping that the big stage of the WBC will turn these sluggers swing happy. Only 75 of the 175 pitches Israel threw on Monday were in the strike zone, for a zone rate of 42.9%. That means Israel threw 100 pitches outside the zone; Dominican batters swung at just 16 of them.

The king of the walks on Monday was Manny Machado, who has been less patient in his career than Tatis, posting an 8.1% walk rate over his 14 big league seasons. No matter — the Dominican captain went 0-for-1 with three walks and one hit-by-pitch. He leads the team with six walks, and his on-base percentage is an absurd .714.

Manager Albert Pujols indicated that his team’s excellent plate discipline is more an effect of having such a deep lineup, rather than the cause of it. Each player recognizes that he’s surrounded by All-Stars, so none of them feels any pressure to be the team’s offensive engine.

And that depth extends to the bench. After starting the first two games, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Julio Rodríguez, and Austin Wells were given Monday off; Carlos Santana, Oneil Cruz, and Agustín Ramírez replaced them in the lineup. That backup trio combined to go 4-for-10 in the game with three walks, four runs, and two RBI.

Cruz, specifically, is making the most of his limited WBC opportunities. He pinch-hit in Friday night’s opener against Nicaragua, demolishing a 116.8-mph, 450-foot home run into the upper deck in right field, but didn’t play in Sunday’s seven-inning contest. Starting in center field and batting seventh on Monday, Cruz was one of the four batters to walk before Tatis’ grand slam in the second inning, and he walked again in the eighth.

Between the two walks, he smoked his second home run of the tournament, a wicked 115.6-mph liner that defied gravity for 400 feet before it landed in the grass beyond the wall in center. The solo shot came with one out in the fourth inning and extended the lead to 6-0. After two quiet innings from the team, he led off the seventh with a double to center, then came around to score on Tatis’ two-run single.

Remarkably, Cruz is no better than the Dominican Republic’s eighth-best hitter. The 6-foot-7 force of nature is coming off a down 2025 campaign, in which he put up just an 86 wRC+. And while it’s fair to attribute some of his woes last year to his transitioning to playing center field full-time, he has always been a frustratingly inconsistent player. He boasts 100th-percentile exit velocity and bat speed, yet the trade-off is he whiffs on more than a third of his swings.

That said, the World Baseball Classic might be the ideal setting for him to thrive. Cruz has never met a slider in the dirt that he didn’t want to chase, but he doesn’t have to worry about that from the pitchers representing teams like Nicaragua and Israel. He can unleash on any pitch he sees without having to worry about it darting below the zone.

Considering that competition, it’s here that we should exercise some caution when it comes to this offense. Only three of the 20 pitchers the Dominicans have faced in their three games have appeared in the major leagues: Kenley Jansen of the Netherlands, and Israel’s Zack Weiss and Jake Fishman. Against that trio, the Dominicans scored two runs in a combined 4 2/3 innings. And really, two of those pitchers aren’t representative of the quality of arms that await these hitters the rest of the tournament. Weiss has pitched in parts of three big league seasons and recorded just 27 1/3 innings, the last of which came in 2023. All 11 of Fishman’s major league innings came with the 2022 Marlins.

For now, though, we shouldn’t hold it against the Dominican Republic that their hitters have mashed against inferior pitchers. That’s exactly what they’re supposed to do. Besides, it’s not like Soto or Guerrero or Ketel Marte is incapable of hitting big league pitching. The Dominican Republic probably won’t keep scoring more than 10 runs each game, but it isn’t going to stop scoring, either.

The key question is whether this dangerous offense is potent enough to beat the best teams even if the pitching doesn’t hold its own. The first real test for the Dominican Republic’s hitters is set for Wednesday night against Venezuela in the final game of pool play. Nothing we’ve seen so far has told us much of anything. We’ll find out more soon enough.