myworldofbaseball

When the World Baseball and Softball Confederation start postponing August and September tournaments, it does not look good for a major league season. The Women’s Baseball World Cup that was scheduled for Mexico on September 11-20th has been postponed and the Under 15 Baseball World Cup scheduled for Mexico on August 14-23 has also been postponed.

The Under 23 World Cup scheduled for Mexico during September 30th to October 9th is still on schedule. That tournament has already been postponed and pushed back once.

Time will tell whether the CPBL will open its season on April 11. They will be playing the games in empty stadiums.

In Korea they have been working out with each team playing intra squad games. Exhibition games held between two teams have not been allowed. The players there have been practicing wearing masks. The KBO was hoping to start the season April 21 but that may now be pushed back to May with a shortened season. They had planned on shutting down their season when the Olympics began, but with the Olympics pushing back their event until next year that gives the KBO some extra days to work with. Most returning foreign players are being subject to a mandatory 14 day quarantine period before they attend their first workout, so that has complicated things.

Japan was hoping to start their season on April 24, but three Hanshin Tiger players tested positive for the Corona virus. Now there is some talk to push that season back.

Difficult for myworld to post any baseball news when there is no baseball being played anywhere.

The China Professional Baseball League still has plans to open their season on April 11 according to CPBLstats.com. The only caveat is the games will be played without fans.

There is a possibility they may play the games with a maximum number of 150 season ticket holders, but that comes with conditions. The fans must wear masks at all time, there will be identity verification at the gate as well as temperature checks, a safe seat distancing plan must be in effect and there will be no vendors at the game.

The corona virus has not impacted Taiwan as badly as other countries. As of March 23 they have had 195 cases, just over 80 percent of them from overseas. Hong Kong also had a small number of cases giving them comfort to relax their strict social distancing standards. Recently, the corona virus cases have increased in Hong Kong, mainly because of foreign visitors that they have now prohibited foreign visitors from entering Hong Kong.

The corona virus has forced the postponement of the final Olympic qualifier for baseball from April until June 17-21. The teams expected to play in that are Taiwan, Australia, China, the Netherlands the second and third place finisher from the Americas Baseball qualifier in Surprise and Tempe Arizona on March 22-26.

The winner of this final qualifier would be the sixth and last team to qualify for the Olympics in baseball. The four countries that have qualified include the host Japan, Israel, Korea and Mexico.

As far as their baseball season myworld has not heard about any postponements or special conditions concerning their exhibition seasons. Japan is playing their exhibition season in empty stadiums while Korea has cancelled it exhibition season.

The World Baseball Classic will be played in four venues in 2021. The two foreign venues for pool play and quarterfinals will be Taichung, Taiwan and Tokyo, Japan. Tokyo will host both a pool round and a quarterfinal.

Chase Field in Arizona will host a pool round. Tucson, Arizona is also hosting two qualifying rounds for the World Baseball Classic in March 2020. Miami will be hosting a pool round, a quarter final and the finals.

Myworld was at a pool round match between the United States and the Dominican Republic at the last World Baseball Classic. We have not witnessed a more electric crowd at a baseball game in all our travels around the world watching baseball games. It should be entertaining to have three rounds of matches played in Miami.

The one down side with playing in Miami is the difficulty getting to the stadium with the traffic. It may be best to stay in the down town area. Also, the best parking available is usually in the back yards of neighboring houses. That has got to change. Don’t know if that is the same for major league games but even spring training has gotten away from back yard parking.

Haarlem is a pretty cool city to watch baseball. You have the downtown area with a number of nice eating establishments and a little out in the suburbs you have the ball park where the Honkball tournament is held. It is also held in late June/early July where the sun stays out until 10 PM, or so it seemed. Loved the fact that bicycles seemed to outnumber automobiles as the mode of transportation.

Honkball has announced five of their teams for their tournament for June 26 to July 5 at the Pim Mulier Stadium in Haarlem. Netherlands, Cuba, Germany, Japan and Taiwan are the teams that have been added to the tournament. They are looking at adding a sixth team from the United States, but Curacao is an easy alternative if they cannot attract a team from the United States.

The Netherlands is normally their national team. You may recognize some ex-major or minor leaguers from their rosters. Roger Bernadina is a name some may recognize. Japan and Taiwan are teams whose rosters are filled with players from industrial leagues or colleges. Japan is the defending champions and Taiwan has won the tournament in the past. Cuba will probably be a mixture of veterans and youngsters depending on where Cuba wants to go. Germany will probably be a team composed of their national team players that could include Donald Lutz.

So enjoy the tulips, windmills and baseball in Haarlem. It will be a week difficult to beat for a vacation.

The World Baseball Classic has officially announced their qualifiers, both to be played in Tucson in March. The games will be played at the Kino Sports Complex.

Pool 1 (March 12-17) - Brazil, France, Germany, Nicaragua, Pakistan and South Africa

Pool II (March 20-25) - Czech Republic, Great Britain, New Zealand, Panama, Philippines and Spain.

The top two teams from each pool will qualify for the World Baseball Classic that will be held March 2021. All 16 teams who participated in the 2017 World Baseball Classic have qualified for the 2021 event. Those countries include the defending champion United States, Australia, Canada, Cuba, China, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Netherlands, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Taiwan and Venezuela

Japan has achieved the top rating in both men’s and women’s baseball. The United States is second in men and fifth in women. For men the United States team bypasses a number of tournaments such as the World Cup Under 23, and play amateurs in the Premier 12, which prevents them from accumulating the points that Japan earns. The United States women are hampered by the culture of forcing talented players to pursue softball, where it is a high school recognized sport, abandoning baseball. This eliminates talented female baseball players from continuing with the sport.

Below is the Top 12 Ranking for each gender.

Men’s Top 12

1. Japan (6,127 points)
2. United States (4,676)
3. Korea (4,622)
4. Taiwan (4,352)
5. Mexico (3,375)
6. Australia (3,249)
7. Netherlands (2,690)
8. Cuba (2,641)
9. Venezuela (2,624)
10. Dominican Republic (2,512)
11. Puerto Rico (2,013)
12. Canada (1,873)

The top 12 is significant since a team qualifies for the Premier 12 by being ranked in the top 12 for baseball.

The women’s top 12.

1. Japan (2,505 points)
2. Canada (1,947)
3. Taiwan (1,852)
4. Venezuela (1,736)
5. United States (1,524)
6. Australia (1,182)
7. Korea (955)
8. Cuba (947)
9. Dominican Republic (717)
10. Hong Kong (520)
11. Netherlands (500)
12. Puerto Rico (371)

In women’s softball the United States is ranked number one with Japan at number two. For the men in softball Japan is ranked number one. The United States is sixth, behind Argentina, New Zealand, Canada and Australia.

The Under 23 Baseball World Cup qualifying round will be held in Nicaragua and Honduras. Competing in the Nicaragua competition will be Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and the hosts Nicaragua. In Honduras, other than the hosts the competition will be Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala and Panama. Absent from the competition are the United States and Canada. Even Puerto Rico is absent in the tournament.

The Under 23 World Cup will be held October 2-11 in Mexico. Mexico are the defending champions having defeated Japan in 2018 when it was played in Colombia. Other countries who have qualified to play are Germany and Czech Republic (European qualifier), New Zealand (Oceania - Australia dropped out), Taiwan, Japan and China (Asia Qualifier), Korea (wild card selection) and Mexico as the host.

Honduras is an interesting country to choose to be a host for a baseball qualifier since baseball is not a big sport in that country. If you want to grow the game you have to expose the countries not usually exposed to baseball. Not sure why the United States and Canada chose not to participate but the major and minor league pipeline availability probably has something to do with that.

The United States may have finished in fourth place but they had the most players on the All Tournament team. Japan had the MVP in outfielder Seiya Suzuki and possible future major leaguer second baseman Ryosuke Kikuchi. Below is the All World team.

Starting Pitcher - Chang Yi (Taiwan)
Relief Pitcher - Brandon Dickson (United States)
Catcher - Erik Kratz (United States)
First Base - Bobby Dalbec (United States)
Second Base - Ryosuke Kikuchi (Japan)
Third Base - Wang Wei-chen (Taiwan)
Shortstop - Kim Ha-seong (Korea)
Outfield - Seiya Suzuki (Japan), Jonathan Jones (Mexico), Lee Jung-ho (Korea)
Designated Hitter - Brent Rooker (United States)

The winner of the bronze medal game between the United States and Mexico will qualify for the Olympics. Mexico has beaten the United States in a game earlier in the tournament. Korea has qualified because they are in the gold medal match and Japan has already qualified for being the host. Because the top two teams from the Premier 12 qualify and Japan has already qualified, the winner of the bronze medal game becomes the second team to qualify for the Olympics.

The United States has to thank Taiwan for getting them to the bronze medal game. They beat Australia yesterday. If Australia had won they would have played in the bronze medal game versus Mexico.

Taiwan 5 Australia 1

In international competition Australia has always had trouble scoring runs. That came back to haunt them again as Taiwan pitchers held their hitters to five hits. The only run Australia scored was on a solo shot in the sixth by Logan Wade that tied the game 1-1.

Taiwan put the game away in the eighth when they scored four runs. The first was driven in on a Wei-Chen Wang single. The last three scored when Che-Hsuan Lin deposited a ball into the left field bleachers for a three run homer. For Lin it was his first homer and first three runs driven in for the tournament.

Chih-Wei Hu pitched well for Taiwan, hurling five shutout innings and allowing just three hits. Stephen Kent shut down the Taiwan bats after they scored a run in the third, throwing four shutout innings and allowing just two hits. Hu did not allow a run in his two appearances, working 8.2 innings. Kent has the most innings pitched of any reliever, four appearances with 11.1 innings and a 1.59 ERA.

Australia did get opportunities to score, advancing a runner to second in four of the nine innings they batted.

Japan 10 Korea 8

This game did not really count for anything except bragging rights. Today they play again for the gold medal. Japan erupted for six in the third to win this game. Korea bounced back for five in the fifth but they never could capture the lead.

Neither team felt a need to use their starters, or if they did they were replaced after a couple innings. Seiya Suzuki did get one RBI to increase his tournament RBI lead by five (12 RBIs). Korea’s young superstar Baek-Ho Kang got his first start in the tournament and drove in three runs.