pacino wrote:does the italian team have any actual italians this time?

I'm guessing Liddi from the Mariners is on the team.

Team USA roster announced on MLBN just now. J-Roll the SS. Vic, Stanton in OF. No Trout, no Harper.

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130117&content_id=41000908&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb

no Roy or Cliff? Verlander? Kershaw? did they not want to, or were they not asked? Good team overall, but weird to not have Trout on it. He does so many things.

pacino wrote:no Roy or Cliff? Verlander? Kershaw? did they not want to, or were they not asked? Good team overall, but weird to not have Trout on it. He does so many things.

That was Trout's decision.

Wright-Rollins-Phillips-Teixeira is a p. good infield.

Aumont, Orr, Gillies playing for Canada. Also old friend Scott Mathieson.

extremely excited to see Aumont pitch again

TheAAGuy wrote:Aumont, Orr, Gillies playing for Canada. Also old friend Scott Mathieson.

In other words, Team Canada is the equivalent of Team Australia from 2009 (I.e. lots of Phillies).

Team Netherlands is prospect-laden.

so would the USA if they weren't all-star-laden

TheFrank wrote:Wright-Rollins-Phillips-Teixeira is a p. good infield.

OF is awesome with Braun, Jones and Stanton. Pitching staff is pretty weak though.

Think I gotta pull for the Netherlands in this. I want to watch Bogaerts and Profar, and look at some of these other names:

Wim Martinus, Coach
Bayron Cornelisse, P
Diegomar Markwell, P
Tom Stuifbergen, P
Berry van Driel, P
Orlando Yntema, P
Yurendell de Caster, IF
Wladimir Balentien, OF (vaguely remember this guy)
Kalian Sams, OF

HONKBAL

Wladimir Balentien.

Was a Mariner prospect a while back. I thought he would be a good guy for them to promote and try out. Power bat who struck out a LOT. He swung real hard at just about everything.

Was supposed to be given his big chance in 2009 I believe. Showed up at Spring Training out of shape and never really recovered. Given away to the Reds later in '09 and he faded away aftewr that.

Been with Yakult the last two seasons hitting 31 homers each year. Had nice stats last season.

Probably a better player than Delmon Young.

WBC starts this Friday evening, no official broadcast schedule from MLB Network yet. (I just know they are tape delaying the Korea/Netherlands game...thanks guys).

They will allow live streaming though if you subscribe to MLB Network and your carrier is one of the approved ones etc.

http://worldbaseballclassic.com/watch

I get why GMs don't like it. I get why pitchers don't want to go.

I have a harder time getting people who say, "ugh, I hate the WBC." this is players playing for their countries. it's still pretty exciting.

I was talking with a couple guys at work today, baseball fans both, and both were like, WBC? What's that?

At the bar, but it looked like an Australian beat the play at first by a few minutes but was called out. He was pretty mad too so I think he was easily safe.

well that sucked, woke up at 3:30 AM just to see Korea get shutout 5-0 by the Netherlands. 4 hits, 4 errors....not the same Korea WBC teams that the tourney has seen in years past.

jurassic5 wrote:well that sucked, woke up at 3:30 AM just to see Korea get shutout 5-0 by the Netherlands. 4 hits, 4 errors....not the same Korea WBC teams that the tourney has seen in years past.

Shoulda put this in spoilers. MLBN is still showing this game.