World Baseball Classic Preview – Seoul/Tokyo Pools

So, what can I say about the World Baseball Classic which hasn’t already been said?

/realizes nobody talks about nor knows (nor cares) what the World Baseball Classic is

What is it?  It’s kinda like the Olympics, but for baseball.

Who plays?  Lotsa major and minor league players.  Also lots of players you’ve never heard of yet, who are representing their country.

Qualifying rounds happened last month.  We’re not gonna talk about those because they’re over and I’m lazy.

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Pool Play

Pool play begins EARLY Monday morning (3/6) in Seoul and Tokyo (that’s what I’ll/we’ll be talking about here)

Pool play also begins Thursday afternoon (3/9) in Miami and Jalisco (the lovely and talented SenorWeaselo will be bringing you those later this week)

But basically it works like this….

Each pool holds four teams.  Those four teams play a round robin (ie they all get one shot at each other) and the two teams who shine the brightest from each pool advance to the semis.  Where they do the same thing again….round robin, top two advance.  Eventually, it’s all gonna end up in LA (March 20-22) where the final four play a single elimination bracket.  Which for baseball seems kinda stupid to go thru all those qualifying rounds only to end up with a single elimination bracket.

Totes not cool IMHO.  It’s not that difficult to do a four team double elim.  We do it regularly here in the college game and it wouldn’t take any longer than their fly by night single elim.  Seriously…here’s a sample 4 team double elim bracket….

It’s really not complicated.  Granted, if you end up in the Loser’s bracket you might end up having to play twice in one day, but that’s motivation to not lose.

Single elimination for baseball is stupid….is the takeaway bullet point here…I guess.

But I digress….

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Pools

As I type this it is just after 6am on Sunday morning.  Don’t get your hopes up that this is gonna be very thorough.

Seoul:  Pool A: March 6-10, 2017

Venue: Seoul: Gocheok Sky Dome

Teams:  Korea, Chinese Taipei, Netherlands, Israel

And now, a random hottie from each country (my money is on the Netherlands, btw)…

Korea:

Chinese Taipei:

Netherlands:

Israel:

What???  They’re armed and there’s four of ’em.  Whaddya want from me?

But sure, let’s say Israel is gonna win this pool (pssst…Netherlands)

But come on Israelites, let’s party like it’s  1399(BC) anyway….

Totally worth it.

But seriously, the Netherlands.

/tWBS hunted and killed by the Mossad

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Schedule:

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Tokyo:  Pool B: March 7-11, 2017

Venue:  Tokyo: Tokyo Dome

Teams:  Japan, Cuba, China, Australia

And now, a random hottie from…..meh, never mind.  You all know me by now…..

Japan:

Cuba:

China:

Australia:

So, who’s it gonna be?

When it’s international baseball and Cuba is involved, they are never a bad bet.  This is no different.

Cuba…?  It’s time.

Schedule:

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My apologies to SenorWeaselo.  Yep, I tanked it dude.  But at least now the bar isn’t set high and anything you do will look really, really good by comparison.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I got a real live baseball game to get to.

Later Taters

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