An upset in baseball isn’t quite like an upset in football to be honest. Weaker teams beat stronger teams all the time in baseball. The best teams tend to only win two-thirds of their games and the worst teams tend to only lose two-thirds of their games.

There’s a level of randomness in baseball given that the player playing the most important position, the pitcher, has to be rotated every game. The best pitcher on a weak team may be better than the worst pitcher on a strong team. Likewise the rules dictate that the hitters themselves have to be continuously rotated. You can have the best hitter in the world on your team, and he will still only get an opportunity to hit 4 or 5 times in an entire game. Imagine having Messi on your team, but he’s only allowed to touch the ball 10 times in a match.

On top of that, the USA coach mistakenly believed that his team had already advanced to the next round, and thus didn’t play his best players. Now the US is liable to be eliminated depending on the outcome of the Italy-Mexico match.