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1. Tschingsch Posted: March 12, 2013 at 06:09 AM (#4386737)And of course as I type that Simmons hit a homer...
Given the extensive rest after this game, this should be all hands on the pitching deck for the Honkballers?
Honkballers should probably give all their backups some time in the middle after the 3rd/4th inning.
They just need to find more Loek Van Mils. I'm sure there are plenty of 7' 95mph throwing people lying around...
5 innings and 15+ run differential.
Doug Flutie should change his name to Doug Floootij
And throw knuckleballs!
5 innings and 15+ run differential.
Thanks
The Honkballers have no real pitchers, and their front-line stars are mostly prospects and AAAA types, with AA guys filling in around the edges. Japan's just a lot better.
If I recall correctly, he had some major control issues.
Hmm, replace Honkballers with Astros. And the description still fits.
Yes it is and yes he did. In his last stint that made it to baseball-reference, he walked 15 and hit 6 batters in 8.2 innings while pitching in the Frontier League.
Thanks for that. I really should make a point of reading wbc previews, right now I just have a vague sense of the tiers of teams.
I also think that because the Netherlands has so little pitching depth they go from being able to hang with a legitimately excellent baseball country like Cuba (which is probably 4th or so in the world in sheer talent level behind the USA, Japan, and the Dominican Republic) when they have their better pitchers available and shelled by Japan when they don't.
How are they doing the seeding for the semifinals? I'm expecting the Dominican Republic and USA to advance, but I don't know how they'll be matched up. Will the #1 seed face the Honkballers?
So here's my predictions from mid-January:
"USA and Canada, Japan and Cuba, Korea and the Dutch (man, that's a weak pool), Venezuela and the DR."
Woof, I'm glad I'm not a betting man.
My prediction was Venezuela winning the tournament, so I'm certainly glad I didn't bet on it either.
Bogaerts has impressed me this tournament. I'm really excited to see him this summer in Fenway.
Dribbling singles and doubles here and there but in the end, always there with a chance.
I could not be more excited about the andrelton simmons experience this year.
Last year he had 19 fielding runs in 49 games (46 complete). That's just ridiculous. That's a 62 run "pace". The highest ever recorded was 39.
Put another way, only 4 players in history had as many as 19 runs in fewer than 100 games. The other three played 97, 96, and 85.
Fun fact: If Italy somehow wins this pool, it will guarantee a European team in the final.
We are to that point with the Italians, especially if they win this game and Puerto Rico upsets Team USA tonight, ensuring that at least one of the two biggest providers of MLB talent is knocked out of the tourney. You might see one of Selig's people attack Rizzo in the middle of the night. He's a Cub, so it will only minimally affect the regular season.
Okay, fine, no fireworks.
This was in the back of my mind during the USA-Canada game. I wanted Canada to win, but that result would have made the rest of the tournament a lot less interesting.
Yeah, see, would it be good for baseball worldwide, especially in Europe, if Italy were to make it to the semi-finals? Probably.
But would it be good for THIS VERY TOURNAMENT, RIGHT NOW? No, because everybody would laughing at the idea that a team where only about eight players plus a few coaches on it are actually Italian had gotten there while more home-grown baseball powers hadn't.
Why is this the first time i have actually seen shots of marlins park? I must have listened to all of the marlins games on the radio last year or something.
I think your second paragraph might take away from the first. That is, will even Italians get excited about making the semis of a tournament that everyone will regard as a joke?
It'd depend on how Alex Liddi and Alex Maestri did, really. Like, if Italy were to beat a team on a HR by Liddi or Maestri getting a win, it'd make more of an impression than if it was Rizzo hitting a HR or something like that.
* This actually happened to Spain- they started relying so much on passport players and defectors that actual Spanish-born players don't get much attention anymore.
I remember reading somewhere that with Italy and (to use another example, albeit one that didn't make the main tournament) Israel, it is often considered a manner of pride of an Italian-descended* or a Jewish person does well, even if it isn't for the "home" country. A similar thing happens in Chinese culture: Jeremy Lin is probably the biggest sports celebrity in the Chinese-speaking world, and both China and Taiwan have tried to "claim" him as their own, despite the fact he's American and even was on the Team USA practice team for the 2012 Olympics before he had to pull out due to free agency concerns.
*I remember reading somewhere that the Italian media made a semi-big deal over the fact RICK SANTORUM was of Italian descent, and, hilariously, it turned out that the Italian Santorums were basically Communists, or something like that. But let's not get into politics...
So maybe an Italian team doing well in the WBC would have more effect in Italy than we think...
It's the same way for Indians.
Well, the shortstop was on the move and trying to catch it over his shoulder, so it wasn't just a routine pop-up...but yeah, he should have had it.
I'm surprised they didn't call the infield fly rule.
However, it is possible that Torre is smarter than his critics give him credit for. By batting Stanton 8th, Torre is inviting fans and the media to compare him with another slugger who batted 8th for him. Yes, this certainly might be Joe's way of annointing Stanton as the new ARod. Interpreted in this way, batting Stanton 8th might be the highest honour Torre could bestow upon him.
Either that or Torre thinks that Mike Stanton the LOOGY reinvented himself as a 4th outfielder type like Ankiel.
This is the guy that once lead off Womack and hit Cano 9th for years (granted, on the 2005-2006 yankees it was someewhat justified.)
Yeah, I like Smoltz the player, but he has gone a long way to convincing me that he doesn't really understand the wider game of baseball all that well. He's also gone a long way to convincing me he doesn't understand a ton of what "pitching" is beyond throw your pitches hard and down. Even the older version of a successfully pitching John Smoltz never really strategized, he had better than average stuff until he imploded with Boston.
Dang it Alderson! You got the wrong Avenger! Thor is the one who swings the hammer!
Wait, I thought that was Ryan Braun, the hitter!
But anyway, it's finally going to happen: USA vs. DR. USA has slight advantage due to depth and starting pitching (assuming good R.A. Dickey shows up instead of bad R.A. Dickey), but... damn, that could be a great game.
My experience much improved when i turned to the foreign language broadcast.
I don't expect much. Either two foreign teams are going to be playing each other, in which case the announcers don't have many players they know to talk about, or USA will be playing and I'm sure they have orders not to cover the USA more than the other team. The effect should be a chance to learn more about these foreign players, instead they talk about nonsense for 5+ innings.
Verducci's piece says David Wright has batted with the bases loaded in the WBC more than he did with the Mets all last year.
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