World Baseball Classic 2017: USA-Dominican Republic start time, channel, live stream info, TV, prediction

The 2017 WBC continues with two powerhouses facing off on Saturday

By Matt Snyder

Mar 11, 2017 at 6:35 pm ET • 1 min read

The 2017 World Baseball Classic continues with five games on Saturday. Given that we’re headquartered in USA and that’s where most of our audience lives, the most prominent game is the United States vs. the Dominican Republic. We’ll once again have a live blog for it.

Here’s how you can watch the game:

How to watch

Teams: USA vs. Dominican Republic
Date: Saturday, March 11
Time: 6:30 p.m. ET
Television: MLB Network
Streaming: MLB.tv

Below is our live blog of the game. You can scroll past it for our preview and pregame prediction.

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Preview

The two favorites in Pool C, both teams started off with victories, though they came in much different fashion. Dominican Republic smoked Canada on Thursday, 9-2, behind big home runs from Welington Castillo and Jose Bautista. USA, meantime, needed 10 innings to beat a far-inferior -- at least on paper -- Colombia team on Friday night. USA only had one extra-base hit and scored the game-tying run on a strikeout and passed ball.

Still, all that matters is winning, and both teams sit 1-0 and in good shape to advance to the second round. Whoever wins this one surely guarantees a spot while the loser needs to take care of business against a weaker team (Colombia in the case of Dominican Republic while Canada remains for USA).

One thing to keep in mind is that even though the game is being played in America, these are all technically neutral-field games and the home/visitor on the scoreboard is decided randomly. In this case, USA will bat first as the road team.

The pitching matchup is Marcus Stroman for the United States (he was 9-10 with a 4.37 ERA last season) and Edinson Volquez (10-11, 5.37) for the Dominican Republic.

It definitely feels like a game that should be high scoring, but it’s also baseball, which is wholly unpredictable on a game-by-game basis. Perfect segue time ...