Dominican Republic v. Puerto Rico Will Be One Of The Best WBC Matchups Ever

The do-or-die stakes only heighten the tension around Wednesday night's game.

One way or another, a team that ranks among the best in the entire 2023 World Baseball Classic field will be eliminated Wednesday night. As for the other? It will move on to the quarterfinals of the tournament — and remain among the favorites to win it all.

Those are the stakes when the Dominican Republic faces Puerto Rico in the win-or-go-home final contest of Pool D play. Entering the game (through March 14), here are the current WBC Elo rankings, with both teams virtually tied and each sitting in the Top 3 overall:

In winning Pool D, Venezuela has been among the most impressive squads of the tournament, going 3-0 and adding 19 points to its Elo rating. But since only two teams can advance from each pool, that means either the D.R. or P.R. will be left out in the cold depending on who loses the head-to-head matchup in Miami Wednesday night.

And what a matchup it will be. According to the harmonic mean of pregame Elo ratings, the combined score for Puerto Rico vs. the Dominican (1553.8) is the fourth-highest rating for any game in WBC history:

Interestingly, there is a Dominican Republic-Puerto Rico game that ranks higher all-time: 2017’s second-round matchup, which saw P.R. win 3-1 and eventually advance to the championship round. But tonight’s contest ranks highest among games that took place in the first round of the tournament. And with a nearly perfect 50-50 pregame win probability split, this D.R.-P.R. matchup is also the closest among the all-time great WBC matchups (beating out the second of three Japan-South Korea contests on the list from 2009).

All signs point to a classic game — even though it’s unfortunate that one of these two great clubs will see its WBC journey end prematurely tonight.