The US still looks like the second best team remaining in the second pool. I think we can defeat Puerto Rico, and slide into the winners bracket. Dominican Republic should be able to take care of business versus Italy, but stranger things have happened. At this time, I would have to say that Dominican Republic are the favorites right now to win the whole thing.
Watching Cuba-Netherlands. Either the Cuban manager is a genius, an asshole, or loves the sound of his own voice and his in-game machinations.
The Dominicans look like they came ready to play for sure. I still think Japan are the team to beat however.
Puerto Rico defeat Italy 4-3 and eliminate Jersey Shore from the tournament. This was a repeat of the Dominican Republic-Italy game. Italy went up 3-0 early, was up 3-1 in the 8th and just collapsed. Puerto Rico scored 3 runs in the bottom of the 8th going through their whole lineup once (and they left the bases loaded). They took the lead on some very good baserunning by Alex Rios. He's on 2nd, ball is hit to short, ball does not hit Rios but he's running in front of the infielders and his running distracts them but there was nothing foul in what he was doing, the third baseman goes for the ball and misses, shortstop gets it, throws to first, and it's a bad throw so first baseman is off the bag and the hitter is safe at first. Rios meanwhile never stopped running and scored from 2nd on an infield hit. Italy just had some braindead fielding, don't know if it was nerves or whatever. One Puerto Rican reliever Burgos threw 3 and 2/3 innings starting in the 6th and didn't give up anything to the Italians, wound up being credited with the win. He must have a bright future ahead of him in the majors, he's young and they said he went from Single-A to Double-A to Triple-A all in one year, and didn't have an ERA higher than 2 in any level.
Of the 5 teams remaining, here's how I'd rank likelihood of winning: 1. Dominican Republic 2. Japan 3. U.S. 4. Netherlands 5. Puerto Rico I do think a lot more of the U.S.' chances after those last 2 innings against Canada where the hitters started crushing the ball. It carried into the Puerto Rico game where we comfortably won with no issues or concern, and when you think about the history of the U.S. in this tournament, those comfortable wins are pretty rare (we destroyed a poor South Africa team in 2006, we defeated the Netherlands with ease in the 2nd round losers' bracket in 2009 after getting mercy ruled by Puerto Rico). So I'm optimistic going forward, although the Dominican and Japan are not slouches we're going to roll through. In order for the U.S. to win this, they'll have to defeat at least one of them and probably both.
Decent enough list. I still think it's Japan and then either the US or the Dominicans. I can't really rank the US as I really have no idea what they are going to do on any given game. They are stranding people on base way too often, but at the same time they seem to be slowly becoming a cohesive team. RA Dickey absolutely must find his knuckleball by tomorrow night, he was pretty terrible against Mexico and the US needs Cy Young Dickey out there tomorrow. I like that the team has Vogelsong as an insurance policy but I sure hope that Torre isn't forced into starting Holland if the team gets a semifinal game. Maybe he can use Holland in the seeding game and Gonzalez again in a semifinal if the US advances. The problem with the tournament (in terms of a team's chances of winning it) is that you can't let your starting pitcher have a bad game. This isn't a seven game series where you can lose a game and no big deal. If you have a RA Dickey against Mexico night, then you seriously risk going out of the tournament.
I'm not buying Japan. If they have to play the US in the semifinals, I think they go down. They were one out away from being sent to the loser's bracket by Taiwan, and they haven't looked like the dangerous Japan team that we've seen from previous tournaments. I still think the Dominicans will win this tournament, but I don't see Japan going to the final.
4-0 Puerto Rico in the 6th. Given the lack of offense from the US, this one's looking like it's over. Hopefully, the USA will take this seriously in 2017 ....
No David Wright essentially ended the WBC for USA. By the way, way to be clutch, Jimmy Rollins. I love how you always try to hit a 6 run home run when just a baserunner will do. Never change.
If the USA isn't going to take this tournament seriously, then the US players should simply say, "Look, I'm not interested" and stop with the pretense that they care. This team is taking up a slot for another country that may actually want to be there. Give our spot to Brazil or China or heck, even the UK. Our soccer team proudly represents us at the World Cup. Why are the baseball players not getting any heat for not showing up?
The infield was probably the most derided part of the lineup after starting pitching when the event started, and I thought Rollins, Phillips, and Wright played well throughout the event. It's a shame David Wright had to pull out to nurse his back when he was playing so well. Really, I don't get the notion the U.S. failed although the media and baseball fans will portray it that way. They lost to a very good Dominican team by 2 runs and a Puerto Rican side by 1 run, that's baseball. Our pitching let us down in both games, but 8 runs allowed in 3 games in the 2nd round? You're not going to do much better than that. I think the Dominicans are going to win it all, our pitching held them to 3 runs, and the guy that let up the runs that lost us the game was Craig Kimbrel, who I think was the best closer in Major League Baseball all of last year. They should've got more than 2 runs in the 8th against PR. My one complaint in that game there is I don't understand why Torre didn't utilize pinch hitters in the 9th when he had the bottom of his lineup. Outside of that, their only main negative was the Mexico game where Mexico threw their best pitcher at us and our starter, the defending NL Cy Young winner, had a bad day.
In short, I don't put this down to we didn't have the talent. We could've had some more offensive production, but the positions that were criticized pre-tournament was the infield, and the infield did pretty well. Wright hit 7-of-16 (.438, 10 RBIs), Rollins hit 9-of-28 (.321), and Phillips hit 7-of-26, (.269). And defensively, Phillips especially, played great, he saved our bacon with one play in the Canada game that cutoff a big run they could've done in the 8th inning. We lost 3 games, and 2 of the losses were down to the performance of pitchers that were a Cy Young winner and the best closer from 2012. You're not going to do much better than them. I'd love to have Verlander or Sabathia and our team would be better with them obviously, but that's like saying the U.S. soccer team would be better with Landon Donovan. Yeah, no sh*t, but without him they can still beat Honduras or Costa Rica.
I told y'all that Japan wasn't going to make it out of the semifinals. This is the Dominicans tournament to lose.
Don't think that statement could ever be true in the WBC. Given the single-elimination format, its always going to be pretty open.
The Dominicans have the highest talent quotient left in the tourney but every competitive match they have played has been close and in one game anything can happen. The Dutch are a solid team.
As the Dutch showed in Tokyo though, they can throw all their pitching at one game and have nothing left for the one following. So if you're the Dutch manager, you'd throw everything at tonight's game wouldn't you since it doesn't matter to have anything in reserve if you lose tonight? But if they do, Puerto Rico are huge beneficiaries. front page of the WBC site, video post-game of the Japanese team saluting the crowd and Puerto Rican team: http://www.worldbaseballclassic.com/2013/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130317&content_id=42902236&c_id=t843
Because both the players, and to a worse if not larger extent, the owners don't care. I'm in New York and the local paper had a two page spread suggesting that David Wright should apologize for not telling the Mets that was hurt. In other words, he should apologize for putting his country before his team.I wrote in asking if Messi, Lebron James, or even the Rangers goaltender (who plays for the Swedish team) would have been asked to apologize if they were hurt on international duty. It seems that many players, the owners, and even many fans think that the 162 game season and winning the World Series are more important than international play. Frankly I find that concept laughable, and in some ways scary, beyond measure.
Why, though? I like the WBC, but I enjoy it for what it is: an exhibition. I don't put any actual stock into it. It was invented to globalize the game, and make MLB more marketable to the masses beyond the Caribbean and East Asia. I hate international soccer. Does that make me a bad person or a bad fan because I hate international soccer?