AP Photo/Ashley Landis

The Rundown: Teenager Makes Waves Against Team USA, Suzuki Homers Twice, Weird New Cruise Movie

Photo of Evan Altman Evan AltmanMarch 7, 2026

It’s pretty wild to watch the Winter Olympics and see teenagers holding their own and even winning against the greatest athletes in the world, but it’s not always relatable. I’ve never been a skier and I can barely keep myself upright in skates, so those aren’t things my kids ever got into. So even though it’s mind-blowing to think that some kid who could pass them in the high school hallway is showing out on TV, there’s a healthy dose of disassociation.

That’s not the same with baseball, something that consumes a good chunk of our daily existence. So when 17-year-old Joseph Contreras took the mound for Brazil against Team USA in the World Baseball Classic last night, we were rapt. The son of former White Sox pitcher Jose Contreras is just five months older than my son, and he’s a senior at Blessed Trinity Catholic School in Roswell, GA. He is pitching for Brazil because his Houston-born mother is of Brazilian descent, and it helps that the roster is thin enough to allow for a prep player to make the cut.

It also helps that the young man is 6-foot-4 and just shy of 200 pounds with a fastball that approaches triple digits. As fun as it was to see the kid firing upper-90s heaters, what I liked the most about his 33-pitch outing is that he was clearly rattled by the magnitude of the moment. So many of these phenoms seem to be almost robotic, but Contreras looked like a teenager. And that’s a good thing.

He had trouble finding the zone as he misfired glove-side frequently, likely because he was jacked on adrenaline and was trying to do too much. Even so, he managed to record four outs against the best lineup in the world, even forcing Aaron Judge to ground into a broken-bat double play.

Between that and watching a 29-year-old electrician topping out at 79 for Team Czechia, I’m convinced that the WBC is the coolest worldwide sporting event we have. I mean, how awesome would it be to attend the pool games at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, where the crowds are absolutely bonkers? Just watch the celebration of this Junior Caminero home run from the Dominican Republic’s 12-3 win over Nicaragua.

On second thought, close your eyes and listen to it.

That, my friends, is unadulterated joy.

Suzuki Homers Twice in Japan’s Second Win

Shohei Ohtani‘s grand slam paced Samurai Japan’s 13-0 romp over Chinese Taipei on Friday, but Seiya Suzuki provided most of the fireworks in their 8-6 defeat of Korea this morning. The Cubs right fielder was 2-for-3 with a pair of homers and a walk to carry his team. Ohtani did pick up another round-tripper of his own to go with a single and two walks.

I’ve got a feeling that Suzuki is going to have his best season yet in MLB, and I don’t think it’ll be particularly close. His home run totals have risen in each of his four seasons so far, plus his walk rate has been improving. He drove in 103 runs last year, 29 more than his previous high, and he seems more comfortable. Then you consider that the implementation of ABS should help him more than just about any other player.

I don’t think 40 homers would be too much to ask.

Playing in front of a home crowd has to make this even more special. The Japanese fans may not be quite as raucous as their Caribbean counterparts, but they are no less passionate about the game.

Maybe getting to 40 dingers will be enough to get all Cubs fans to agree that Suzuki is actually a very good baseball player.

More News and Notes

  • Lost in the wake of a teenager facing the Monstars was 20-year-old Lucas Ramirez — yes, the son of Manny Ramirez — hitting two solo shots for Brazil. His mother is from Brazil, in case you were wondering. His second was a moonshot hit at a 50-degree launch angle, which would be tied for the highest in the Statcast era.
  • That makes me think of Molly Shannon’s infamous Sally O’Malley character from Saturday Night Live in the late 90s and early 2000s. She sported a red jumpsuit and told anyone in earshot that, “I like to kick, and stretch and KICK!! I’m 50!!”
  • Team Brazil also featured Dante Bichette Jr., whose green hair and over-the-top chain game created quite a look.
  • Freddy Peralta is seeking an extension of seven or eight years in talks with the Mets, per Jon Heyman.
  • Dealing away your ace would normally be a huge blow to a team, but the Brewers aren’t normal. They seemingly get better each time they trade away their best pitcher, so we should expect Chad Patrick to challenge Paul Skenes for the NL Cy Young. Manager Pat Murphy announced that Patrick and Jacob Misiorowski, who was moved to the bullpen late in his rookie season, will start out in the rotation.
  • Milwaukee will have to do some shuffling elsewhere, as Brandon Woodruff and Quinn Priester are both iffy for Opening Day. The fifth spot, along with at least one fill-in, will go to one of Aaron Ashby, Robert Gasser, DL Hall, Kyle Harrison, Logan Henderson, or Brandon Sproat.
  • I’ve got a soft spot for Patrick because he’s a fellow Northwest Indiana kid who was born in Crown Point and graduated from tiny Hebron High School before attending D2 Purdue Northwest. That’s where my parents both earned their degrees many moons ago, though it was Purdue North Central at the time.
  • Patrick was a fourth-round pick by the Diamondbacks in 2021, but was traded to the A’s at the deadline two years later. He was then flipped to the Brewers in November of ’23 and made his MLB debut last March.
  • The IHSAA just released enrollment totals and classifications of member schools for state tournaments over the next two years, and Hebron was dropped to 1A with 282 students across all four classes. That’s 35 fewer students than my alma mater, North Judson-San Pierre, which is now the second-largest school in 1A. We had right around 500 when I graduated, which would have made us one of the largest in 2A had the class system been in place at the time.
  • My son goes to Brownsburg High School, which is the eighth largest in the state with 3,464 students. Their smallest class is 831 students, which would tie them with Culver Academies for the 122nd largest school in the state and one of the larger 3A schools. So each class is at least 2.6 times as large as NJSP’s entire school. That’s awesome for academic opportunities — my son is taking an aeronautical engineering class next year and my daughter accumulated enough AP credits to possibly graduate early from Butler — but it can be tough athletically.
  • I was talking with my buddy Jeff Passan the other day and he noted how much less competition there is at a smaller school. That can be both good and bad, which is where class sports come in handy. Brownsburg would crush most other schools around here, but that also means there are plenty of kids who would star elsewhere but can’t even make the team here.
  • That’s actually a bit like the Contreras kid, who would have no shot at playing for Team USA in the WBC but got to pitch against them due to his ties to Brazil. It’s all about finding those opportunities and making the most of them. In this case, I think we just saw a young man earn himself a big enough draft bonus to walk away from his commitment to Vanderbilt.
  • I suppose I should note that the Cubs played a game on Friday, though it was just as forgettable as I’m making it seem. Ben Brown walked three batters and hit two more in 2.2 innings of work, though he did get three strikeouts.
  • Brown’s wildness had nothing on Brazil’s pitchers, who walked 17 and hit two on Friday.

Trailer Time

Billed as “A comedy of catastrophic proportions,” Digger is an upcoming black comedy directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise. It’s Iñárritu’s first English-language movie since The Revenant in 2015, and it also features Jesse Plemons, Riz Ahmed, and John Goodman. The trailer is just a very eccentric-looking Cruise dancing around with a shovel, which is entertaining in its own way.

Between a brief plot description and some information from World of Reel, we know that Cruise plays Texas oil tycoon Digger Rockwell. After a massive spill at one of his oil rigs creates a potential disaster, Digger “embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior.” I have a feeling this is a movie you’ll either love or hate.

Photo of Evan Altman Evan AltmanMarch 7, 2026
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