a devastating turn of events

Yay! It only took us until the 8th inning to get ahead of a bunch of minor leaguers on our home field!

3-1.

Yadier Molina thrown out at home.

Randall Simon 1-3..1 out

J.C.'s day is finished.

Greg Halman K's...2 out

De Caster 6-3...3 out

Puerto Rico 3
Netherlands 1 Final

It makes me happy that Russell Martin is about to bow out ignominiously, going 0-5 tonight.

It makes me sad to see Matt Stairs sad.

nice pickoff throw.


I predict the mercy rule comes into play in this game.

Italy wins 6-2.

if mexico somehow loses to south africa vinny castilla will probably be burned alive

RODRIGO LOPEZ SIGHTING

decent life on his fastball, showed some kind of tight curve/slider breaking ball.

getting singled to death

FTN wrote:I think there is a really easy way to "fix" the World Baseball Classic to make it interesting and actually mean something.

Honestly, I'm not really sure what you mean by "mean something" because these teams seem to be playing hard and wanting to win. Japan sure seemed excited to win last time. Are you suggesting the results are flawed?

I appreciate the effort you put into your system, but I don't particularly think it's good. And so....

1. Have the International Baseball Federation create a world rankings, similar to the FIFA rankings. The top 5 seeded teams plus the defending champion would automatically qualify for "Round B" as I'm going to call it. If the defending champ is one of the top 5 seeds, then the #6 seeded team would make it.

1. IBAF does have a ranking system actually, but it's pretty flawed mostly because so few competitions take place. And many of those competitions (i.e. the Baseball World Cup) feature considerably less than full strength squads. Until we get a routine of teams playing international matches regularly (friendlies, qualifying games, etc.) they'd be tough set up.

1a. You could use past performance in the WBC, however, as a way to determine seeding. Probably be more accurate.

2. The cutoff between #5 and #6 (or #6/7) is huge despite being pretty arbitrary. That's not particularly good. If you are gonna make some cutoff, the drop down has to be much more gradual.

2. "Round A" as I'm going to call it, would take place during the winter leading up to the competition, so in the case of 2009, it would have happened in December 2008. The teams not in the 5+ champion group would be placed in 2 equal groups and would play a round robin style tournament. So you'd have 10 teams in 2 groups, and you'd play each team once, a total of 4 games. The best record in each group would advance to Round B.

I think this has a bunch of flaws...

1. Separating this from the rest of the tournament makes it, well, much less special. It's too detached to mean much, yet it's probably the most interesting part of the competition that you detail.

2. 5 teams per group means that 1 team gets off each day. That creates a very unbalanced field where the timing of your bye can make a huge difference. It should be an even numbered group so every team plays every day

3. You're inevitably going to end up with teams tied at 3-1 or 2-2 and have to resort to the ludicrous tie-breaker procedures they had in the first WBC. That's awful. There's a reason why double elimination is the standard in baseball tournaments in college -- because it's an effective but clean way to determine champions/advancing teams.

4. This interferes with winter baseball leagues and the Caribbean World Series. I know it's easy to blow off anything not MLB but that's some real baseball tradition.

5. That said, at least this part has teams playing a variety of opponents, which is pretty much the point. And there's enough games to actually determine who is better or worthy to move on. Which brings us to....

3. So that means you'd have 8 teams remaining, and this would be decided by the end of December. Spring training starts in mid Feb, games start the beginning of March. So instead of having the WBC at the beginning of the month, you have it at the end of the month. That means guys came in to camp, they were able to spend times with their teams, their coaches could manage their workload early and get them in shape, and then they'd leave for a week at the end.

Okay, I kind of get the point here, but...

1. What about the guys in December being out of shape? Why isn't that important (and if you make the cutoff at 6 teams, there's certainly going to be teams there in "Round A" who feature a decent number of MLB players).

2. Would it simply be easier to start Spring Training earlier? Or having the players participating in the WBC have a camp for fitness that pre-dates regular spring training? It strikes me that you are throwing out the baby with the bath water by watering down the WBC so much just to fit in with MLB schedules.

Keep in mind the WBC is only going to be once every 4 years; it's not terrible to have a somewhat shorter winter vacation and/or longer spring training those relatively few years.

You have 8 teams left, teams seeded 1-6 and then the 2 winners of the play in groups. Then you set it up as a single elimination tournament with the 8 teams left.

Single elimination in baseball sucks. If anything IMHO, it's the biggest flaw with the current WBC setup (which I generally like) in that the semis and final are single elimination. But at least by that point teams have already "proven" themselves by winning a bunch of games before they get to that point. Single elimination means that your pitcher has a bad day and you're out. One bad inning, blah blah. It's a terrible way to determine a champ in this sport -- especially since you are suggesting that the 6 "best" teams play right from the start in this system, giving them virtually no room for error.

But the final would be a best of 3 game series.

Even more ironic, in that the final is the one time I personally think that single elimination makes sense. Once you can ween down to 2 teams, once they've been through the grind earned a championship berth, either team is deserving. So, the random fluctuations of a bad game is less important IMHO, but you get the benefit of the intense "do or die" for both teams (like a World Series game 7). A best of 3 can be anti-climatic, if a team wins in 2, so that's better served in the middle of the competition (if you want to arbitrarily put it somewhere) rather than at the end.

You could play the entire thing in a week. I think this would be awesome for a number of reasons.

A week is way too short for it to be much fun or interesting. Once you start getting into it, it's done. Besides, more importantly, it's just way too few games to have any actual meaning at determining a championship.

a.) Teams would take the games more seriously instead of just assuming you're going to cruise through the group games to get to the real competition. The Dominican Republic, for instance, might not have taken the Netherlands so lightly had they known it was 1 and done.

So, the current format is "2 and done". Is it really that much different? I haven't gotten the sense that any team has really blown things off. And under your format, the main reason teams wouldn't "take teams for granted" is because all of the involved teams would be "top" ones anyway -- without underdogs to root for, a competition becomes less interesting IMHO. Netherlands beating DR made this WBC more interesting, not less, and under your system they'd probably not have even had a shot.

b.) Players who might be bailing out of the competition for fear of getting hurt, or not getting their reps in, or not having a shot at a roster spot, now have almost an entire spring to get ready before the contest. Players get hurt because they tend to overexert when they aren't physically ready. By the last week of March, you're ready.

I think the being prepared is an excellent point and should be worked on (the Japanese players started training in January, it should be pointed out). But I think this is a valid point.

c.) Knowing its 1 and done, it will add more significance to each game, which should create a better environment for everyone involved.

I dunno, double elimination doesn't exactly make each game insignificant -- there's a huge advantage in winning your first game. And at least provides some leeway. Your system is so unforgiving.

And the bigger reason I think your system is boring is that a team wold face so few other teams. It's likely that a champions would play only 3 other teams and play a only 4-5 games. As we well know, anything can happen in baseball, and 4-5 games doesn't determine much of anything. And the real fun of this kind of tourney IMHO is seeing teams play a variety of others -- one thing I hated about last time was that you had the same teams playing over and over due to the setup (oh, Korea and Japan again. Yawn). It's improved in that regard, but could be better.

I think the system should be tweaked. I think perhaps making it shorter and starting a little later makes some sense. I'd get rid of the superfluous "seeding" games -- the team that goes 2-0 in the group should be the group winner and the 2-1 team. [As an aside, the inclusion of that games says to me that the organizers want more games, not fewer, which goes basically against you plan.] That not only gets rid of a likely repeat game, but also makes the opening game more serious -- want to be the top seed in your group? Win your first game and don't blow off the Dutch.

I'd also like to see more variety. Second round groups (assuming the same number of teams) should be A1, B1, C2, D2 (and C1, D1, A2, B2) so that everyone is new for that round.

I'd wouldn't mind seeing double elimination for the final four, but I'm cool with that setup. By that point, teams have already won 4 games and have gone no worse than 4-2, so they've earned their place. Not a big deal to have some randomness with single elimination at that point.

I guess it depends on what "flaws" you feel the WBC has. My big complaints are a lack of variety (an Asian group again plus teams from round 1 playing in round 2) and the pointless seeding games. I think the length can be helped by centralizing the games and cutting down on travel between matchups (in addition to getting rid of the seedings).

Of course, the biggest flaw is top players not playing. That I'm not sure how to fix -- especially with pitchers -- but I don't think making the contest so short as to be insignificant will inspire people. If anything, I think the biggest the event, the more of a television bonanza it is, the more players will be interested. And certainly some upsets won't hurt -- keeps the good teams on their toes.

wow you took a lot of time there to tell me my idea was dumb.

i think the current tournament is dumb.

FTN wrote:wow you took a lot of time there to tell me my idea was dumb.

Well, I least thought it would make sense to point out what I viewed as the flaws. You spent a lot of time coming up with it.

i think the current tournament is dumb.

Why? Seems to me that your biggest complaint is a perception that the teams don't take it seriously enough and/or that the players are not in good shape to play. (Please feel free to correct me)

I don't particularly think the former complaint is true and even if it is accurate, I don't think your system really solves the problem and has the side effect of making the results essentially meaningless due to a short single elimination setup. As for the latter point, seems to me there's many ways around it beyond shortening it to a weeks worth of games.

That all said, I am actually interested in ideas for what would make the tournament "better". As an aside, you can use the current format and get rid of the seeding games and shorten the entire tournament to 8 days of games if you want -- the tournament is spread out intentionally for TV and to allow for travel (which can be solved by fewer/closer together sites).

Chan Ho Park slid on his knees in jubilation in front of the clubhouse TV after watching his native Korea defeat Japan in the WBC this morning. Park, you'll recall, tearfully declined to pitch for Korea because he wanted to stay with the Phillies and make a bid for the No. 5 starter spot. So far, Park is looking good.

-C. Gormz

A quick recap of where things stand going into today's games:

ROUND 1
POOL A (Tokyo)
Korea 3-1 (POOL WINNER)
Japan 2-1
China 1-2 (ELIMINATED)
Chinese Taipei 0-2 (ELIMINATED)

POOL B (Mexico City)
Cuba 1-0
Australia 1-0
Mexico 1-1
South Africa 0-2 (ELIMINATED)

POOL C (Toronto)
USA 2-0
Venezuela 2-1
Italy 1-2 (ELIMINATED)
Canada 0-2 (ELIMINATED)

POOL D (San Juan)
Puerto Rico 2-0
Netherlands 2-1
Dominican Republic 1-2 (ELIMINATED)
Panama 0-2 (ELIMINATED)

ROUND 2
POOL 1 (San Diego)
Korea
Japan
B Winner
B Runner-Up

POOL 2 (Miami)
C Winner
C Runner-Up
D Winner
D Runner-Up

FINALS
Semi-finals (Los Angeles)
1 Winner
1 Runner-Up
2 Winner
2 Runner-Up

Championship (Los Angeles)
Semi-finals winners

once a team is eliminated, do the players report back to their teams?
i miss ruez

So if Ned beats Panama, they advance if PR beats DR?

lethal wrote:So if Ned beats Panama, they advance if PR beats DR?

No, they have to play the DR again. Panama is d-u-n done.