myworldofbaseball

The 48 year old Manny Ramirez has appeared to sign with the Sydney Blue Sox in the Australian Baseball League. A couple weeks ago myworld posted that there was some buzz that he would be signing with the expansion team out of New Zealand. The Sydney Blue Sox appear to have gotten into the fray and beaten the Auckland Tuatara to the punch. The ABL begins December 18.

There are no details on the contract other than it is a one year contract. Manny will be a player coach and an ambassador to baseball in Australia. The last time Ramirez played any baseball was in 2017 when he played for an Independent League in Japan.

The Australian Baseball League (ABL) has renewed their agreement with major league baseball signing a three year agreement. It appears they also maybe making a splash with some interesting signing rumors.

There is some buzz that Manny Ramirez may sign with the Auckland Tuatara, an expansion team to the ABL for the 2018/2019 season. This signing, or even rumor of signing could be enough to sell some tickets. This would be for the 2020/2021 season if the corona virus allows for a season to be played.

In their second season in the ABL Auckland won the Northeast Division with a 21-18 record. The Melbourne Aces eliminated them in the first round of the playoffs.

There was recent news that Manny wanted to return to Taiwan to play baseball. The Taiwan rosters were filled and teams normally focus on foreign pitchers and not hitters. Ramirez did play half a season in Taiwan a number of years ago. It is still possible he could sign with the CPBL expansion team the Wei Chuan Dragons, but that is only conjecture on myworld’s part. If the Dragons wanted to attract attendance for the inaugural season a Ramirez signing could give them that.

Because one of the requirements is you have to have played in the major leagues it limits the talent level of the Japanese players. Some of the all time greats from Japan are not eligible. Limiting it to Japanese players who played in the major leagues would not create a full roster of quality players. In some cases, like with catcher you only have one player born in Japan that played catcher in the major leagues. This is a team filled with Asian players from Australia, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, thought Australia and Taiwan only had one player each.

Starting Lineup

Ichiro Suzuki RF (Japan)
Kosuke Fukudome CF (Japan)
Shohei Ohtani DH (Japan)
Hideki Matsui LF (Japan)
Ji-Man Choi 1B (Korea)
Kang Jung-Ho 3B (Korea)
Tadahito Iguchi 2B (Japan)
Kenji Johjima C (Japan)
Kazuo Matsui SS (Japan)

Bench

Dave Nilsson (C) (Australia), Rob Refsnyder (UTL) (Korea), Nori Aoki (OF) (Japan), Shin-Soo Choo (OF) (Korea), Dave Roberts (OF) (Japan), Tsuyoshi Shinjo (OF) (Japan)

Starting Pitching

Hideo Nomo (Japan), Masahiro Tanaka (Japan), Daisuke Matsuzaka (Japan), Yu Darvish (Japan), Park Chan-Ho (Korea)

Bullpen

Koji Uehara (Japan), Kazuhiro Sasaki (Japan), Hideki Okajima (Japan), Shohei Ohtani (Japan), Seung-Hwan Oh (Korea), Chien-Ming Wang (Taiwan)

This team lacks a true shortstop. Matsui and Kang played a lot of shortstop in Japan and Korea but were not considered major league shortstops. This is a big hole. Behind the plate you can rotate Nilsson and Johjima. Choi was even considered a catcher when he played in Korea and briefly in the minor leagues. So Taguchi was left off the roster but he and Shinjo are interchangeable. Refsnyder was included because of his ability to play infield. There are a number of quality starting pitchers to choose from. Kenta Maeda was left off this roster in favor of Park. The bullpen can have seven relievers because of the dual ability of Ohtani. Wang is the one player from Taiwan who I could not squeeze in the rotation but I did put him in the bullpen. He could make an occasional emergency start. That knocked off Australian lefty Graeme Lloyd.

It was originally scheduled for September 11-20 but had to be cancelled because of the corona virus. It has now been scheduled for November 12-21 in Tijuana, Mexico. Twelve teams will be competing in this event. They are:

Americas: United States, Canada, Mexico and Venezuela
Asia: Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines
Europe: France
Oceania: Australia
Wild Card: Cuba, Dominican Republic and Netherlands

Japan is the defending champion and has won the last six events. They have not lost a game in their last 30 contests. Taiwan lost in the finals to Japan. Canada defeated the United States for the bronze medal. The 2018 games were played in Vierra, Florida.

There would be no walkoff victories for Melbourne in game two, since the games were being held in Adelaide. The Aces scored all six of their runs in innings 3 through 5 to down the Giants 6-2.

Shane Robinson, the walk off hero in game one got things started for the Aces in game two with his two run homer in the third. Delmon Young, the ABL homerun champion made it 3-0 with his solo shot in the third.

Mikey Reynolds drove in the Giants first run with his solo shot in the bottom of the fourth to cancel out the Young shot and keep the game close. The top of the fifth saw Robinson and Young continue their assault. After a ground ball double play scored one run, Delmon Young singled to drive in Shane Robinson for run number six.

The Giants were able to tack on their second run in the seventh on a Jeremy Hazelbaker solo shot, but that was the extent of their scoring.

Wes Helsaback got the win, working 6.2 innings, giving up just three hits, but two of them solo shots. David Holmberg gave up five runs in 4.2 innings to take the loss. The attendance was listed at 1,907. Catcher Allan de San Miguel will retire as a champion, always a cool way to end your career.

The Adelaide Giants had just scored two runs in the top of the ninth to take a 3-2 lead. In the inning the Giants failed to hit the ball out of the infield, but two walks, a hit by pitch, a bunt single and an infield single put them ahead 3-2.

The Melbourne Aces tied the score in the bottom of the ninth on a Allen de San Migeul (ex-Bowie Bay Sox) single into centerfield, which Aaron Whitefield booted, allowing Quincy Latimore (another Bowie star) to score and San Miguel to advance to second. With two outs Shane Robinson singled down the third base line into the left field corner and San Miguel found the legs to carry him home for the go ahead score.

The Aces scored their first two runs in the sixth inning on an errant throw by the third baseman that allowed two runs to score to give the Aces a 2-1 lead. Shane Robinson finished the day with three hits and the only RBI of the game for the Aces. Errors by the Giants allowed the other three runs to score.

Australia will play their baseball championship this weekend. The Melbourne Aces will play the Adelaide Giants (ex-Bites) in a best two out of three format. The Brisbane Bandits had won the championship the last four years, but this year did not even get to the semi-finals.

The Aces beat the New Zealand team, the Auckland Tuatara to get into the finals. The Giants downed the Canberra Cavalry. The league reported a 21 percent increase in attendance with the Brisbane Bandits leading the attendance at 1,507 spectators per game.

Delmon Young of the Melbourne Aces leads the ABL in homeruns with 13 and RBIs 42. This is his second season in the ABL. He also played in 2017 for the Aces.

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 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.