World Baseball Classic: Round 1, Pool B Recap

The next two teams to advance to Round 2's Pool 1 takes us to Round 1's Pool B. And with the addition of the new qualifying round, the story of Pool B has to start with Qualifier 4, which was played in Taiwan's Xinzhuang Stadium. If you couldn't tell by the location, this qualifier was completely stacked in favor of team Chinese Taipei. Not only were they the only team to have participated in past World Baseball Classics, but there is already a strong baseball presence in Taiwan (one that attracts some notable former major leaguers, the most recent being Manny Ramirez). To drive the point home, the Chinese Taipei has three current or former major leaguers on their roster -- the other three teams in the qualifier combined have two, and just one who played in the last five years.

That one player: Johnny Damon, who suited up for team Thailand. Yes, I know he was born in Kansas, but his mother is actually from Thailand. He's the only one on the Thai team with a name that's even remotely pronounceable, let alone recognizable. The Philippines team surprisingly had a couple of everyday players in the low minors: Leighton Pangilinan played first base for the White Sox's class A affiliate and Ryan Pineda played second base for Oakland's A+ squad. The only player from the New Zealand team who spent significant time in professional ball is Boss Moanaroa, who will compete with Sugar Ray Marimon and Cuba's Erisbel Arruebarruena for the title of coolest name in the tournament.

Needless to say, Chinese Taipei steamrolled through the qualifying round undefeated, which means they only had to shift cities in Taiwan, from New Taipei City to Taichung, for Round 1 play. The significantly more fierce competition in Pool B included 2009 runner-up Korea, the surprisingly effective Netherlands (who won two upset victories against the much higher seeded Dominican Republic last tournament), and also Australia is there too. New Zealand's larger cousins from down under didn't bring much thunder to this tournament, the only major leaguer on the roster being Luke Hughes, who scored a grand total of five (5) fantasy points combined with the Twins and Athletics (he did however rack up nearly 700 minor league points, mostly with the AAA affiliates of Oakland and Toronto -- he was a busy guy last year). The team's highest scorers in the minors were first baseman Mike Walker, who might have a chance to make the improbable jump from Milwaukee's high class A affiliate to the majors what with the injuries to Corey Hart and Mat Gamel, and Pittsburgh's low minors third baseman Stefan Welch, this team's cleanup hitter. Also on the squad was former Mariners pitching prospect Ryan Rowland-Smith, who spent last year languishing in the Cubs system trying to make it as a reliever. The top major league Aussies Grant Balfour, Travis Blackley, and Liam Hendriks didn't show up for the WBC, which might explain why the team went home without a win.

In one of the failings of the Round Robin format, all three of the other teams finished with a 2-1 record. In this situation, where each team had the same head-to-head record, the tiebreaker falls to a novel concept called Total Quality Balance (or TQB). Below is the official WBC site's definition of TQB:

TQB is the sum of runs scored divided by the number of innings played on offense, minus the number of runs allowed, divided by the number of innings played on defense. For purposes of determining TQB, only the scores from the games between the tied teams are to be used in the calculation.

Groundbreaking statistical analysis here, folks. The results unfortunately pointed away from the country that comes from the most robust baseball tradition in the pool: Korea. Thanks to this brilliant English language site dedicated to the Korean Baseball Organization, I was able to perform nearly as in-depth analysis on these players as their American and Japanese counterparts (both of whose baseball organizations are included in the industry standard baseball-reference.com), so I was sorry to see them go so early in the proceedings. As with my Pool A recap, I'll leave the winners for the next round and spend some time picking apart the Korean team.

Korea had two players featured in the ESPN.com article profiling the best non-MLB players in the WBC. Lee Dae-Ho, the power hitting first baseman who holds the world record for home runs in nine consecutive games, moved to the Japanese league last season after an impressive ten year stint with the KBO's Lotte Giants. He is the only player on this team who played with an organization outside the KBO this year (not counting game three starter Chang Won-Jun, who is currently serving his military service), which means that the lone Korean major leaguer Shin-Soo Choo (as his name appears in the western fashion) did not make an appearance. The other player mentioned in the ESPN.com article was game one starter Yoon Suk-Min, who spent 2012 with the KIA team, one of just four pitchers on this squad to have also played in the 2009 tournament. Yoon was teammates with the only former major leaguer on the roster Seo Jae-Woong (who played in the US as Jae-Weong Seo). There were eight batters returning from the last WBC, although lone 2,000+ point scorer shortstop/third baseman Kang Jung-Ho was not one of them.

Round 2 starts today at the Tokyo Dome with Cuba hosting the Netherlands. Also starting today are the Round 1 games that will determine the other half of Round 2. All Pool C and Pool D teams have played two games exhibition games against major league clubs over the past few days, so I'll have a pretty good idea of their lineups going into tournament play. Stay tuned for the final Round 1 recaps as results come in!