The Premier12 tornament is sort of an replacement for the old IBAF Baseball World Cup. The old game that lasted from 1938 to 2011 was replaced by the World Baseball Classic (WBC), where MLB players are allowed to participate. After the baseball/softball organization merger, WBSC came up with this one name, hoping to have another top level international baseball competition, and gain support from the Olympics committee to bring baseball back into the Summer Games.
Anyway, Taiwan and Japan shares as hosts of the first ever P12. The preliminary will be split in to Group A and B. Group A will first play in Taiwan, and Group B will play in Japan. The quarterfinals and the rest of the games would be played in Japan.
Group A: Taiwan, Cuba, Neatherlands, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Italy.
Group B: Japan, USA, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Mexico, and Korea.
The top 12 in the WBSC Baseball World Rankings are qualified to participate.
The first game between Japan and Korea was yesterday, and Japan won 5 to 0. The Koreans complained that they were not given time to familiarize with the Sapporo dome, while team Samurai’s starting pitcher Otani Shohei, who plays for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, felt right at home. That would also be the only game at the Sapporo dome for the entire P12.
Team Taiwan will play their first game at Taichung Continental Park tonight (Nov. 9) against the Netherlands.
The game tonight, and basically every single game in the tournament will be broadcast live. PTS (公視, channel 13 usually), and the VL cable network channels will be showing them. Game is on at 18:30 tonight.
The US plays South Korea on Sunday night in Taipei (which sadly is the only game I can attend)
US roster made up mostly of prospects and managed by former Yankee 2nd baseman and Mets manager Willie Randolph. Rick Peterson is the pitching coach.
The Dutch have Andruw Jones, Wladimir Balentin, Jair Jurgens and another one or 2 former MLB players.
The Dominican team has former MLB player Pedro Feliz and are managed by former MVP Miguel Tejada.
The rules are that no player who was on a MLB 40 man roster in September can play. It kind of sucks as Japan should blow throw this tournament as the Japanese League didn’t prevent their good players from being eligible so they have a pretty solid roster. I’m guessing South Korea would be the 2nd team as they have a bunch of guys from their top league as well. US roster has a bunch of Single A to AAA guys. I’m guessing won’t be a very strong performance by them.
The locals just seemed overmatched last night but again don’t have the luxury of a bunch of former MLB guys to fall back on. The sad reality is that unless the local talent starts to sign elsewhere i.e.; Japan, the US and Korea it’s going to be a tough road ahead for them to compete with Japan and Korea and I’m guessing eventually China.
I think what happened last night was the local players put too much pressure on themselves, and were too conservative running the bases and at the plate. It didn’t help the starting pitcher simply fell apart. Chen Kuan-yu is a current NPB starting pitcher, who had a 3.23 ERA this past season. He just had a bad outing.
Taiwan finally gets a real flag in International tournaments. Benefits of hosting the tournament I guess. Although the flag looks a bit too much like the Mexican flag.
Taiwan finally gets a real flag in International tournaments. Benefits of hosting the tournament I guess. Although the flag looks a bit too much like the Mexican flag.[/quote]
Taiwan finally gets a real flag in International tournaments. Benefits of hosting the tournament I guess. Although the flag looks a bit too much like the Mexican flag.[/quote]
Yeah, and ITA gets the Cuban flag.[/quote]
I only just realized that the Mexican flag without the eagle snake cactus thing looks just like the Italian flag.
Taiwan finally gets a real flag in International tournaments. Benefits of hosting the tournament I guess. Although the flag looks a bit too much like the Mexican flag.[/quote]
Yeah, and ITA gets the Cuban flag.[/quote]
I only just realized that the Mexican flag without the eagle snake cactus thing looks just like the Italian flag.[/quote]
You were kidding, right?
They fucked up the flags in the graphic, it was the Mexican and Cuban flags.
The CT flag is
You were kidding, right?
They fucked up the flags in the graphic, it was the Mexican and Cuban flags.
The CT flag is
Ignore if you were taking the piss.
Guy[/quote]
the correct graphic should have been:
which is the flag of the Chinese Taipei Olympic Committee. That is because the use of “Chinese Taipei” is called the “Olympic model”, so the flag is used even in non-Olympic related events.
In any case, these are yesterday’s scores:
Group A:
Cuba 6:5 Netherlands
Puerto Rico 0:2 Canada
Taiwan 71 Italy
Group B:
Venezuela 7：5 USA
Mexico 5：6 Japan
Korea 10：1 Dominican Republic
I was thinking about going through the effort to see SK play USA in Tianmu on Sunday night but that is a really long trip home to KHH. I will probably just go to the JP/USA game in Taoyuan on Sat night.
The Netherlands is good internationally because Curacao (and a couple of other small baseball playing islands) are part of the team.
I really want to see Park (from SK) because my hometown team is expected to sign him (have sole negotiating rights). He has led the SK league in HR’s for 4 years (maybe was 2nd once).
There were a lot of JP fans there and they are a lot of fun at a baseball game. I didn’t really care about the US team since they sent their scrubs (nobody on the 40 man MLB roster or good prospects) but I wish that Otani would have been pitching for Japan. He is supposed to be awesome.
