yakulto Posted March 11, 2009 Share Posted March 11, 2009 For the Dutch to do it once was remarkable, but to do it again is simply stunning. It's just a shame that all these games are unwatchable in Tokyo due to the time difference and work, dammit! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 11, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 11, 2009 This is the first time a European side makes it out of the first round of the WBC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheTransferWindow Posted March 11, 2009 Share Posted March 11, 2009 That was one of the finest displays of total baseball that I've ever seen! Johan Cruyff would be so proud if he knew what baseball was. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 11, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 11, 2009 Australia and Cuba even at 2 runs apiece in the bottom of the 6th. Have I mentioned how much I despise Charlie Steiner? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yakulto Posted March 11, 2009 Share Posted March 11, 2009 Australia took a 4-2 lead in the 6th but Cuba came back late to edge it 5-4. Looked like a hell of an exciting game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 11, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 11, 2009 Australia took a 4-2 lead in the 6th but Cuba came back late to edge it 5-4. Looked like a hell of an exciting game. Yeah, the Aussies were playing far more fundamentally sound baseball and really flustering the Cubans, until the Cubans got a pinch-hit 2-run homer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 15, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 15, 2009 In Pool 2 play in Miami: Venezuela defeats Netherlands 3-1 Puerto Rico slaughters the USA 11-1 in 7 innings (the mercy rule was invoked) The Netherlands will play the USA tomorrow and Venezuela v. Puerto Rico is on Monday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 23, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 23, 2009 Japan defeats USA and Korea beat Venezuela in the semis to set up the fifth game between Japan and Korea in this competition (this aspect of things needs to be dealt with in the 2013 edition). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yakulto Posted March 25, 2009 Share Posted March 25, 2009 Japan beat Korea 5-3 in a superb final. Japan had a 3-1 lead before the Koreans later pulled it back to 3-2, and then amazingly 3-3 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs. They then had a chance to win it there and then (despite Japan outhitting them by some margin) but couldn't pull it off. It allowed Japan to add another two runs in the top of the 10th via the magical bat of Ichiro, and they managed to close out the game in the bottom of the 10th. One of the best games I've ever seen I would say. Overall the WBC was full of some great games and stories, but as you say Levi, they could do with dropping those pointless "seeding matches" at the end of every round, as that would help reduce the amout of replicated matchups. Japan pretty much ground to a halt during the game, with some enormous TV viewing figures, and also good to see some 55,000 turning out in person at Dodger Stadium too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 25, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 25, 2009 One of the best games I've ever seen I would say. Overall the WBC was full of some great games and stories, but as you say Levi, they could do with dropping those pointless "seeding matches" at the end of every round, as that would help reduce the amout of replicated matchups. I would probably say that the decision to send the winner and runner-up from each first-round pool to the same second-round pool is more responsible for the duplicated matchups. I realize that the reason they did it this way is so that Koreans and Japanese could book trips to San Diego ahead of time (and likewise with other countries), but I think it would be a bit more interesting if they laid out the second round as: Pool 1 Korea Cuba USA Netherlands Pool 2 Venezuela Puerto Rico Japan Mexico Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-dub Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 Congratulations to Japan. I think the WBC will continue to grow in stature and worldwide interest (keep in mind that the first couple of FIFA World Cups in the 1930s were not thought to be that big of a deal, and many nations did not even participate, and look where it is now). It would've been nice if the USA took it as seriously as Japan and Korea do; where the manager can treat it like the World Series and not have to worry about getting guys (especially pitchers) injured and angering the clubs. I don't mean to diminish Japan's achievement--they may very well would have won even if all the best American players participated and the manager had the freedom to use pitchers however he pleases. It's the same as if England got to the World Cup final, and Fabio Cappelo took off Steven Gerrard or Wayne Rooney at halftime for fear of angering SAF or Benitez. Then again if the World Cup was like the WBC, Rooney or Gerrard might not even want to play at all. For a variety of reasons, I think it would be better if the tournament was played in November. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yakulto Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 Yes, seperating the teams from one pool to the next is the most obvious way to avoid endless rematches, and hopefully something they'll introduce in 2013, along with the elimination of the seeding games. The double elimination will be back I'd imagine, which I don't mind as I thought it was a good system. It's a shame that the US didn't take it as seriously as the other teams. One of my friends was in the US for while it was going on and said it barely registered on the radar of most US sports fans, which is a shame. Competative international competitions are such a unique experience that it's a shame the US fan knows little, if anything of their joys. Most seem content to continue to look at their leagues as the pinacle of their respective sports worldwide, and in many ways they are. But international competitions offer something more & different. B-dub - your analogy of the England situation is a good one, and there's no doubt the US was lacking key players (though they had some pretty good ones on the 2009 roster) and that the extent to which the team could be "managed" was limited. But to look at it from a different angle I think of it as a Premier League vs England national team kind of thing. The Premier League is probably the best league in the world, it's teams dominating the Champions League and teams from Europe. But when it comes to international competitions, the England team are on the whole mediocre to good. The MLB is the best baseball league in the world, but take away the foreign talent (Dominicans, Venezuelans, Puerto Ricans etc, etc) that helps populate the league (I believe it's around 30%) and the US team just just doesn't match up to the standard of the MLB as a whole. The quality of the MLB magnifies the image of US baseball as all-powerful, in the way that the Premier League does to the England team. Knowing a fair bit about Japanese baseball, their roster was stacked with talent. In the first game at Tokyo Dome when we saw the starting lineup on the scoreboard, it was of true "dream team" standards. It would have been interesting to see how they would have done against a US team free from the restrictions you mentioned, but I'm pretty sure they'd have stacked up pretty well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 26, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 26, 2009 The main restrictions were the pitch counts that every team had to adhere to... this would tend to favor the teams then, that have deeper wells of pitching talent (i.e. the more prominent countries). Agree that a November staging might make more sense, especially since there's less competition on the US sports calendar (NFL and college gridiron are both weekend phenomena, and it's too early in the season for the NHL, NBA, or college basketball to matter) and may lead to some of the shackles being taken off. In March, you have the NHL, NBA, and college basketball all at least starting to see fan interest crescendo as playoffs and the Tournament approach and worse all three of those are staging games nightly, crowding the WBC out of the news hole, plus spring training grabbing some of the interest of hardcore baseball fans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
yakulto Posted March 26, 2009 Share Posted March 26, 2009 The main argument against November that I heard were that most players would have been wound-down for a month or so after the regular season while the postseason took place. November would make sense to me though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B-dub Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 The main advantage to playing it in November in my view is that, as it is now, the clubs are worried that players will be injured and unavailable for opening day (April 6 this year). But if a player gets injured in November, he still has all winter to recover in time for the season. So there's less risk, and the manager has less pressure from the clubs. Furthermore, I think the players (especially the pitchers) are much closer to mid-season form in November (a month after the MLB season ends, or less for the players whose teams made the playoffs) then they are in March, only a few weeks into Spring training and after sitting around all winter not seeing live pitching. A starting pitcher, for example, who is only expected to go 4 innings and throw 70 pitches in March would be more capable of going 7 or 8 innings and throwing 100+ pitches in November. Wouldn't it be great if you had a classic pitching duel in the latter stages of the WBC, for example Roy Halladay of the US versus Johan Santana of Venezuela? Or Dice-K vs. Brandon Webb? That just couldn't happen in the WBC in its current format, but you would see that in a World Series. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 27, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 27, 2009 USA falls to fourth (from second, IIRC) in the world rankings, behind Cuba, Japan, and South Korea. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dont_do_it_doug. Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Meh, screw the WBC, the season is nearly upon us how do you guys rate your teams chances? I'm a Braves fan. With a new look rotation, a somewhat healthy pen with plenty of upside and loads of pitching depth full stop I think we're close to competing again. Need the likes of Francoeur, Kotchman, Johnson and (hopefully) Schafer to step up to give the offence a bit of a boost, 140 games from Chipper would be nice too. About 86-88 wins I reckon. Will be 3rd in the East again but with the likes of Hanson and Heyward waiting in the wings and chomping on the bit, watch out for us in 2010. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RunRickyRun Posted March 27, 2009 Share Posted March 27, 2009 Meh, screw the WBC, the season is nearly upon us how do you guys rate your teams chances? I reckon we (White Sox) will win the Central but a lot depends on either Contreras or Colon avoiding a disastrous season. We have a really good hitting line up and could see Quentin, Fields, Thome, Konerko, Dye and Ramirez all hit over 20 homers provided they stay healthy. Our bullpen looks strong as well. We have no speed on the team whatsoever, so am preparing myself for lots of frustrating defeats with countless men left on base. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted March 28, 2009 VT Supporter Share Posted March 28, 2009 I'm a Braves fan. With a new look rotation, a somewhat healthy pen with plenty of upside and loads of pitching depth full stop I think we're close to competing again. Need the likes of Francoeur, Kotchman, Johnson and (hopefully) Schafer to step up to give the offence a bit of a boost, 140 games from Chipper would be nice too. About 86-88 wins I reckon. Will be 3rd in the East again but with the likes of Hanson and Heyward waiting in the wings and chomping on the bit, watch out for us in 2010. Did you catch my cricket thread that mentions Chipper Jones as possibly the best cricketer of the bunch? As far as the Red Sox, I still think we can retake the AL East title. The Yankees have gone crazy in what looks to me like a comparatively poor free agent year. I think they've massively overpaid for Burnett and Sabathia and I'm not convinced about Teixiera either. Plus I figure the wheels have to come off sometime for Mariano. As for the Sox, I figure we've still got a great pitching depth (Beckett, Buchholz, Lester, Dice-K, Penny, Smoltz, and Wakefield plus Okajima and Papelbon), and as long as Ortiz still has it, I think we'll do very well. It's still a bit weird to be talking about the pitching to the near exclusion of the batting for the Red Sox, but that is how much the current group in 02215 has changed this club. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
El Zen Posted March 28, 2009 Share Posted March 28, 2009 Very much looking forward to the new season now! I predict a good year for my Yankees (Too tired for banter atm, Levi, so shuddit ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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