World Baseball Classic thread
Netherlands is elite edition
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Netherlands have also thrown the only WBC no-hitter
Dutch Players in MLB in 2016: Kenley Jansen, Xander Bogaerts, Andrelton Simmons, Didi Gregorius, Jonathan Schoop, Jurickson Profar
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How much chance do we have to win it?
Altough there are some Dutch MLB players, the rest of the team will consist of Dutch players who play in the Japanese and Dutch baseball leagues.
2nd round is realistic if all works out for you guys, but getting to the finals a second time in a row will be tricky as always
Scherzer is a fucking pussy and pulled out of the tournament, USA will get btfo as usual
not a terrible chance, they're in the easy side of the draw with the asian teams so they could conceivably make the semis again, they'd have to be lucky after that but anything can happen in baseball
they could also crash out, korea, israel and taipei aren't great but they aren't terrible either, it's a pretty balanced group.
>implying Canada and Colombia stand a chance
Colombia has a chance if Quintana and Teheran can throw gems
they'll probably throw out Q in game 1 against the US
vs. Chris Archer, right?
Don't think our roster looks complete yet.
We beat the Dominican Republic in 2009. That was quite an upset I recall. Semis in 2013.
The coaching staff is quite stacked for this WBC (from Dutch point of view). Hensley Meulens as manager. Bert Blyleven as pitching coach, Andruw Jones is the hitting coach.
2009 was a fun classic desu. Went to the finals while I was on vacation in California. You had a pretty neat 2013 team, stayed up super late to watch you guys. Was impressed, especially with knocking Cuba out.
>three worst teams are in the same group
bullshit desu senpaitachi
yeah the coaching and analytics staff is praised as a big part of why the dutch are so good at international competitions, even when the MLB players aren't around. They and the Japs and Gooks probably take this shit the most seriously with advanced analytics and shit.
they're pretty weak pitching wise though, other than Jansen who is elite as fuck
Van Den Hurk isn't terrible. He was lights out in the NPB last year, but then again he was a bust in the majors before going there.
>all those cuban players in that highlight now stateside
>all cuban prospects now leaving before they've even matured into good players
they're going to be fucking shit, I hope they lose to China
We have a baseball team?
The fuck we appeared at 2 world cups and won 1. We're elite.
what
anyway, most of Britain's team I'm pretty sure were just Americans, they've never qualified for the tournament.
He had a stress fracture
Jesus fucking Christ we will never come close to winning this tournament
We have a baseball team?
I wish our players had some fuckinh pride like Japan or Taiwan or DR or literally any other team.
Australia is on the ascent in baseball desu senpai
everyone except extreme third world shitholes has a fucking baseball team
>two of the four teams in the taiwanese baseball league aren't letting their players play in the WBC
nah man MLB killed it's support of the ABL, it'll die soon. pretty sure they had more mlb players a few years ago also
When you're staring from nought up is the only way you can go
Taiwan is too fucked by their corrupt governing body. Australia is still coming up even without the ABL. They have their own little league world series slot. They came in 2nd in the U23 World Cup.
They're gonna be producing more MLB players though. Brazil though is gonna be a big talent pipeline.
whilst i personally think baseball is the least bad of all American sports, you should know that there is little to no interest in it here.
the only Australian resident I have ever met who plays/cares about baseball is a Canadian expat. And as far as casual bandwagoning goes, Concussionball and Apehoop get quite a lot of interest during the grand finals for those sports, but the Baseball World Series gets next to no bandwagoning/media attention
There are more little league teams in Australia than in Japan.
there's more cricket teams in America than baseball teams in Australia, by several multiples
this isnt an arguement
there's also 15 times more people in the USA and several million Indians and Pakis
still pretty sure more kids play baseball in australia than kids play cricket in the US. most of the cricket teams here are adult beer leagues, probably
>per crapita
Why not? It starts at youth. Cricket is definitely growing in the US you know. The world is getting more plural. Sure, Australia isn't gonna be the next Dominican Republic anytime soon, but there is gonna be more talent. There's already been seveal Australian players in the MLB.
it's just a truism to me; with globalisation and the movement of people most sports will grow in most countries
but just as cricket will never be relevant in the USA, neither will baseball here
conceptually i like gridiron and baseball, but i just cant watch them because of the volume and length of the add breaks, it's infuriating.
i can only watch NFL by downloading the game after it is finished
>all those """"dutch"""" mlb players
reminder your mom could've been squirted out in some random country on vacation and you would have the right to play for that country
>Curaçao isn't Dutch
I don't think baseball will really become big in Australia, but they're good at sports so they'll probably just keep producing the occasional big leaguers as they have been for the past couple decades
MLB is focusing on China but I don't have faith in the chinks ever being good at any sport other than ping pong
there's some sort of baseball shit going on in fucking uganda, seems to be going well enough, maybe they can be taiwan tier one day.
It's a pretty niche sport in Colombia and Brazil but I can see scouting and development increasing there if the venezuela situation doesn't improve.
In Brazil it's mostly just played by the japs in sao paulo and in Colombia just in a couple of the atlantic coast cities.
I've watched cricket streams and the ones from India have as many ads as anything, always between overs and sometimes even between balls
also nothing happens between balls in cricket, unlike in baseball where at least the ball is live if there's any baserunners
time between overs is less than time between innings in baseball though, usually.
those all sound like pretty dutch names to me. they're all from curacao or aruba
point is your american grandmother could go to curacao, pop out your mom, who then pops you out in japan, and then you go live your life as an armenian citizen, and you would have the right to play for curacao, holland, japan, USA, and armenia
how did Baseball get big in Venezuela but didn't spread to any of the other south american countries?
Venezuela is very connected to the caribbean.
It's just a caribbean thing, the non british caribbean islands at least, the british ones are all tiny and irrelevant anyway. also haiti is a shithole too poor they probably can't even afford to play soccer
almost all of venezuela lives on the atlantic coast, unlike colombia
Panama and Nicaragua also play, guatemala plays a little bit, Mexico plays along the coast and in North near USA.
Czech Republic is growing too. They'll probably become the third strongest in Europe after Netherlands and Italy.
>I've watched cricket streams and the ones from India have as many ads as anything, always between overs and sometimes even between balls
On that, you are correct. Indian cricket is as bad if not worse than American sports. With India you are more or less watching advertisements occasionally interrupted by that pesky cricket match
But in all other countries the natural flow of cricket works very well for broadcasters. You have an over uninterrupted and then at the end of it one advertisement during the switch between overs. It's a static game that has natural breaks where they can put in adds rather than say NFL and the NBA where they seem to deliberately drag the game out with a silly amount of time-outs etc for the purpose of shoehorning more adds in.
yeah eligibility is loose as fuck, just have to be eligible for citizenship, whatever the fuck that means. someone can probably say that they plan to move to the country and eventually become a citizen after they retire and they'll let them play for them.
Thats why the WBC team is called Kingdom of the Netherlands, instead of the Netherlands. Curacao is part of the kingdom.
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>your country will never care this much
I hope Andruw Jones makes the hall.
I don't like his chances, I don't know if people care about outfield defense very much, and people remember him as the slow fat guy of his later years. Greatest defensive outfielder in history, and a center fielder not some chump ass right fielder like Clemente. By some measures 2nd place isn't even close, Jones was elite as fuck defensively. Plus above average offense and 400 home runs and in my opinion he should be a lock
pretty similar player to Cal Ripken I think, just without the longevity and more power. If he stayed good
>last sentence unfinished
if he stayed good for just 1 or 2 more seasons he'd be a lock
hope to see Ichiro there again
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>not walking him
are gooks literal retards?
Greatest player in Dutch history desu
What about Blyleven
>scherzer dead
>tfw no bumgarner or kershaw or something
we're doomed
>USA won't make final
>no one will watch
RIP WBC it was fun
Kershaw will join if we get to the semifinals, right?
Pakistan somehow made the qualifiers in Brooklyn with all amateur players who never played outside the country and got blown out every game. One guy was literally named Saddam Hussein.
What I'm more surprised about is the total lack of African interest in the sport. I think there's just that one half-Nigerian kid playing professionally in Japan and that's it.
>yfw Israel wins it all
south africa has a couple players in the minors.
gift ngoepe was close to the majors before he took a step backwards last year, he and dylan unsworth look like the best shot to be the first African in the majors
Uganda has had some baseball development recently, they've sent a team to the little league world series a couple times
Will team USA be good for once?
team was better in 09 and they still fucked it up. On paper they're still better than everyone but the DR, who are about the same talent wise, it will probably just come down to how much the players care. or luck, since it's baseball.
>tfw we will make it out of our grup just to play the US and wreck them again
We don't have the full roster yet.
unless Kershaw, Trout and Bryant are the last few spots it won't be better
only a couple position player spots left, those are the best chances for stars probably, still plenty of pitching spots but at this point I can't see any big name pitchers volunteering, they're probably struggling to find big leaguers at this point
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so i found this great graphic error
USA has sent some pretty fucking good teams.
Granderson, DeRosa, Victorino, Braun, Roberts, Rollins, McCann were all 4 or 5 war players. Youkilis, Pedroia, Longoria, Chipper Jones and Wright were all 6+ war guys.
Thornton, Broxton, Bell were some of the best relievers in the game at the time, Putz, Hawkins, Ziegler, Hanrahan, Howell were all decent
Starters were alright. Oswalt and Peavy were no longer great but still good, Lilly and Guthrie were above average
06 team though, that's the true stacked one.
Lidge and Nathan were the best relievers not named Rivera. Fuentes, Cordero, Shields, Street were all very good relievers, Street was rookie of the year. Peavy was elite then, Dontrelle Willis and Roger Clemens were 2nd and 3rd in the cy young the previous season, should have been 1st and 2nd.
And the lineup, A-Rod, Texeira, Jeter, Chipper Jones, Derrek Lee, Chase Utley, Michael Young, Johnny Damon, Randy Winn, Griffey, Varitek. Averaged nearly 6 war the previous season.
Really does not get much better, all the best Americans were there, only really missing Carpenter, Oswalt and Sizemore from the best possible players at the time.
Even the 13 team was elite. Dickey was fresh off a cy young, Gonzalez was a 5 win pitcher, few pitchers were better. Kimbrel was the best reliever in the majors. After these three names though the pitching staff was weak. Lineup was elite as usual, Wright, Braun, Zobrist, Stanton were among the best in the bigs etc
They were saying with Scherzer on the team that this was looking like the best staff the US had put together but it's really not, 06 tops it easily, and the other two years have a case
so the USA never sends a good team excuse is total bullshit, those are elite as fuck teams, they've been getting weaker every time though. Lineup this time still looking fine, but the 7 best American hitters and 15 best American pitchers by fwar last season are not on the team, so it's pretty easily the worst yet, so far
I don't see anything wrong there
Baseball's coming home
No, it shows the Pakistan over Great Br-oh, I gotchu.
we're making it all the way to the classic