The fourth World Baseball Classic opens this week with the ever popular time slot of 4:30 AM Eastern when the most recent addition to the tournament, Israel, takes on the home team of South Korea at the Gocheok Dome in Seoul. By March 8th, all eight teams in pools A & B will have begun play with the American side joining them starting March 9th in Miami and Jalisco. More than ever before, the Classic has attracted some of the greatest talent in baseball as two time winner Japan looks to unseat the reigning title holder, Dominican Republic while team USA features it’s most star laden roster yet. There will certainly be some upsets as well, like the Netherlands in each of the last two tournaments. We’ve already seen some as few expected Israel to unseat Brazil or Colombia to beat out Spain in the qualifying rounds.
Pool A: Netherlands – Israel – South Korea – Chinese Taipei
If there is a favorite in Pool A, it is the home team of Korea who have went 14-5 so far in tournament history. After reaching the finals in each of the first two Classics, they were the odd man out in a three way 2-1 first round tie in 2013, failing to reach the second round. With the exception of Israel replacing Australia (who moved to Pool B), this is the same set of teams as last time although the Korean team has seen a makeover and will no longer feature stars such as Shin-Soo Choo and Jung Ho Kang, instead going with a younger group including the Mariners powerful first baseman, Dae-Ho Lee.
Defense will certainly be a point of emphasis in the WBC this year and the Netherlands have plethora of great infield gloves. Andrealton Simmons, arguably the best defensive player in all of baseball, will lead a group that also includes Xander Bogaerts of Boston, Didi Gregorius of New York and Jurickson Profar. While they will likely both hit and field well, pitching could be questionable beyond ace reliever Kenley Jansen. Leon Boyd was their top pitcher in each of the last two WBC tournaments, but he will not be back this time and asking for anything from Jair Jurrjens, who hasn’t pitched a full MLB season since 2011 or at all since 2015, could be too much.
Chinese Taipei will be looking to build on their surprising success in 2013 and will feature a couple of Indians minor leaguers in Shao-Ching Chiang and Ping Hseuh Chen. Speaking of pitchers who haven’t been effective since 2011, Chien-Ming Wang is included on Taiwan’s roster at 36 years old. As for the long shot, Israel, they do have a few current and former Major Leaguers including Ike Davis and Jason Marquis, but the quality of these players is severely lacking compared to the other rosters and they’ll be playing the role of dark horse. While Ryan Braun and Jason Kipnis declined their invites, they did get Sam Fuld and an Indians second baseman in minor leaguer Tyler Krieger, so that’s something.
Pool B: Cuba – Japan – China – Australia
Cuba is always one of the more interesting teams in the tournament as they intentionally handicap their own team by refusing players who have left the country on their own. This costs them big name players like Jose Abreu, Yoenis Cespedes, Aroldis Chapman and what could essentially be an All-Star team full of Major League talent, but it also allows us to get a first hand look at the next group of possible future Major Leaguers (the last Cuban WBC team included Abreu as well as many other future Major Leaguers including Jose Fernandez, Yulieski Gurriel, Raisel Iglesias and Yasmany Tomas). Because of those unknowns (and the complete unknown of team China), it’s harder to gauge this pool than any other, but teams Cuba and Japan should certainly put on a good show.
While China’s entire roster will be nearly completely unknown to any American baseball fan going into the tournament, Indians minor league coach Bruce Chen is listed as a pitcher. Given that he last pitched professionally in 2015 and is now 39 years old, this could be interesting or just a ploy to bring name recognition to the team.
With as little as we know of this bracket in the US, Japan appears the favorite despite Nori Aoki being the only Major Leaguer and Shohei Ohtani missing due to injury. Tomoyuki Sugano has high expectations as staff ace and given their 17-7 record so far in the tournament including two titles, there’s no reason to doubt Japan has brought a team worthy of facing off against the best in baseball.
Similar to team Israel, team Australia won their way into the tournament with a 3-0 record in the qualifying round and has a few Major Leaguers, but nothing too exciting. Liam Hendricks, Ryan Rowland-Smith and Travis Blackley are all included on the pitching staff and, while it may not seem like much, this team absolutely steamrolled the competition in Sydney this year, beating former WBC tournament team, South Africa, by a combined score of 16 to 6 in their final two games and the newcomer Philippines team 11-1.
After each team plays every other team in the pool once, the top two teams will advance to round two with a possible tie-breaker scheduled for March 10th in Korea and March 11th in Tokyo. Given the shortness of the tournament, each win is gigantic and a single loss can be all it takes to miss out on the second round as Korea discovered last year. With that in mind, the opener of Pool B between Cuba and Japan (March 7th at 5:00 AM EST) will be a huge start to the tournament. The next biggest game on the Asian side of the tournament will begin just a half hour earlier despite being the third game in Pool A as Korea faces the Netherlands. More than either of the two American brackets, these teams are filled with unknown quantities and it should be extremely entertaining to learn about what are essentially completely new rosters for team Japan, Korea and Cuba.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
