By Jonathan Mayo / MLB.com | 3/9/2013 9:14 P.M. ET

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — When the World Baseball Classic was created, it’s likely Major League Baseball had Saturday night’s Puerto Rico-Venezuela game in mind.

A packed house of 18,741 at Hiram Bithorn Stadium was charged from the outset, cheering, chanting and buzzing from the first pitch to final out as Puerto Rico beat Venezuela, 6-3.

The win guaranteed spots in Round 2 for both Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, which beat Spain, 6-3, earlier on Saturday. Venezuela and Spain, both 0-2, were officially eliminated. Puerto Rico advanced for the third straight World Baseball Classic. For Venezuela, a team many felt would advance with the Dominicans from this Pool C, the end result can be seen as nothing less than a bitter disappointment.

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The victory renders Sunday’s games without much on the line, though the second contest between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will determine seeding for the two clubs in Miami’s second round. The runner-up from Pool C will open against the Pool D winner coming from Arizona.

Both starters were crisp at the outset. Puerto Rico’s Nelson Figueroa allowed just one hit, to Miguel Cabrera, over the first two innings. Carlos Zambrano went three perfect frames to open things for Venezuela, while the Venezuelan offense got to Figueroa in the bottom of the third.

Omar Infante got it started with a one-out double, coming around to score on a Marco Scutaro single. After Asdrubal Cabrera was hit by a pitch, Figueroa actually got Miguel Cabrera to pop out to short, but then allowed a double to Pablo Sandoval. That allowed Scutaro to score, but Cabrera was thrown out at third to end the inning.

In the fourth, Zambrano unraveled. Angel Pagan led off the inning with a double, Puerto Rico’s first baserunner, but Pagan was erased when Miguel Cabrera nabbed Irving Falu’s grounder at first and caught Pagan in a rundown. Alex Rios walked, and when Zambrano uncorked a wild pitch, both runners advanced. Carlos Beltran wasn’t able to take advantage, tapping out to third, but not before Zambrano got steamed after a very close pitch that umpire Ed Hickox felt missed the plate.

When Yadier Molina worked out a walk — a plate appearance that included Molina not being allowed to take his base after leaning his left arm into a pitch — Zambrano had reached his pitch limit. Enrique Gonzalez came in and gave up an RBI single to Mike Aviles, which knotted the score at 2, but the threat ended when Molina was thrown out at third.

Figueroa bounced back to put a zero on the board in the fourth, ending his night. Puerto Rico thanked him with a go-ahead run in the fifth. Venezuelan right-hander Henderson Alvarez issued a free pass to Martin Maldonado, who was sacrificed to second by Andy Gonzalez. With two outs, Maldonado was singled home by Pagan, who went 3-for-5, to give Puerto Rico a 3-2 lead.

Puerto Rico tacked on insurance runs in the eighth. Aviles drove in his third run of the game with a sacrifice fly that brought home Rios. Then with two outs, Hiram Bithorn erupted when pinch-hitter Luis Figueroa drove Francisco Rodriguez’s offering into the right-field corner to plate two.

Every pitch, every play, every out had the capacity crowd — not to mention the players — on the edge of its collective seat. Venezuela’s Carlos Gonzalez slammed his helmet down in disgust when he was called out on a very close play in the sixth with one out and a runner on first. Manager Luis Sojo came out to argue, to no avail, and Puerto Rican lefty Giovanni Soto calmly got Salvador Perez to bounced out to second to end the inning. Soto was terrific in relief of Figueroa, tossing three hitless innings, walking two and striking out two.

The crowd roared in the seventh when Rios made a sliding catch on the right-field line after a long run on Infante’s fly ball for the second out of the inning with a runner aboard, and it was whipped into a frenzy when Eddie Rosario ran down Scutaro’s drive to deep left to end the inning, leaving Puerto Rico just six outs away from advancing. The frenzy continued until the final out, sealing Puerto Rico’s trip to Miami.

PHOENIX — There is something fundamentally wrong with a rule that encourages a baseball team to bunt when it has a six-run lead in the ninth inning.

This situation touched off a brawl Saturday in Canada’s 10-3 first-round victory over Mexico in the World Baseball Classic.

There was much at stake, with both teams needing a victory to preserve a reasonable chance of advancement in the tournament. But the emotion that caused both benches to pour onto the field was set in motion by a tiebreaking rule that runs completely counter to normal baseball sportsmanship.

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With a 9-3 lead, Team Canada catcher Chris Robinson dropped a bunt for a base hit. Team Mexico took exception. Relief pitcher Arnold Leon appeared to throw at the next batter, Rene Tosoni, on three straight pitches, finally hitting him with the third. Both benches emptied. What followed was not a pro forma baseball squabble. Serious punches were thrown. Seven players were eventually ejected: four Mexicans and three Canadians. The only fortunate part of this episode was that no player was seriously injured.

The bunt would have been unthinkable in a regular-season game. Ernie Whitt, manager of Team Canada, acknowledged that, saying:

“Regular baseball, during the season, you’d never see that.”

But here you do, because the primary tiebreaker in three-way ties is based on a run-differential formula. Thus, teams have a vested interest in scoring as much as they possibly can. “In this tournament, you play baseball like it’s 0-0,” Whitt said. “That’s the unfortunate thing.”

That’s what Robinson was doing with the bunt. On the other side of the argument, Team Mexico manager Rick Renteria took more than his fair share of the blame for this incident. That was generous of him, but the underlying problem still remained.

“It was just simply, I think, a misunderstanding,” Renteria said. “In a normal setting, a normal professional setting, I should say, a 9-3 bunt in that particular situation would be kind of out of the ordinary. But based on the rules that have been established in this tournament, the run differentials and things of that nature, it was talked about before; that those things may occur.

“I think that if [the rules] are not changed maybe I needed to do a better job of explaining them to my players. I thought I had. I thought I had it understood … I think that everybody will learn from it. I think it will be obviously a topic of conversation for everybody for a little while and maybe it will bring some light or maybe some understanding or maybe help us clarify.”

Whitt, meanwhile, clearly favored a rule change that would eliminate run differential as a factor.

“There’s got to be another method other than the scoring runs, running up the score on the opposing team,” Whitt said. “No one likes that. That’s not the way baseball’s supposed to be played. … And unfortunately teams are knocked out of the tournament because other teams run up the score on them. Unfortunately that’s what you have to deal with when you have that type of format.”

After the on-field brawl, a bottle and a baseball were thrown from the stands at Team Canada personnel.

“One of my coaches was hit,” Whitt said. “[Pitching coach] Denny Boucher was hit in the head with a bottle. [Hitting/first base coach] Larry Walker was almost hit in the head with a ball. That’s when I went out to the umpire, when I said: ‘Another thing comes out, we’re going to pull our team off the field.’”

Fortunately, that was it for thrown objects or thrown fists. The lesson here may have less to do with human foibles than a foible in the rules of the World Baseball Classic. Baseball should not be a sport that encourages a bunt with a six-run lead in the ninth inning. And as it is normally played, baseball is not that kind of sport. Except in the World Baseball Classic.

Although new Cleveland Browns general manager Michael Lombardi is a known admirer of Ryan Mallett, the Plain-Dealer reported last month that the team is not expected to pursue a trade for the New England Patriots‘ backup quarterback.

Now that Alex Smith, Matt Moore and Brian Hoyer are off the market, the tune may be changing. One NFL source tells The Plain Dealer he expects the Browns to try to strike up a deal for Mallett even though another source believes Patriots head coach Bill Belichick will be reluctant to part with him.

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As far as reports go, it’s on the weak side. There’s no indication from any source directly connected with the Browns that they plan to pursue Mallett.

As tight as Lombardi and Belichick have been since the early 1990s, however, there’s a good chance the two men have already touched base about Mallett’s availability.

It’s interesting to note that the Boston Globe’s Shalise Manza-Young told “NFL AM” Friday that she still expects Mallett to be traded before the start of the 2013 season.

Now that Tom Brady is entrenched as the Patriots‘ quarterback through the 2017 season, it makes perfect sense that Belichick would cash in on Mallett for a second- or third-round draft pick if he can land a quality backup such as Matt Cassel.

Follow Chris Wesseling on Twitter @ChrisWesseling.