World Baseball Classic: Round 1, Pool A Recap

When the World Baseball Classic was introduced in 2006, following the decision to remove baseball as an Olympic sport, its aim was to replace the IBAF World Baseball Cup as the premiere venue for international competition between baseball-playing countries. In the five years and two competitions since, the pool has increased in size and the event has grown in prestige as the WBC comes closer to accomplishing its goal. With the second round set to start this week, let's take a look at some of the teams and players that will be advancing.

But first, let's turn the clocks back and see how some of the new faces got invited to the party. Due to a spike in interest compared to the 2006 and 2009 tournaments, the field of participating countries increased almost twofold with the addition of a brand new qualifying round. The modified double elimination round, which took place last fall, consisted of four groups of four teams each, one of which would advance to one of the first round pools (or the Alphabet Pools, since each one is designated by a letter. The pools in Round 2 are each assigned a number). Since Qualifier 3 fed into Pool A, I'll focus on that for this preview.

Qualifier 3 took place in Panama City's Rod Carew National Stadium during the third week of November 2012. This matchup pitted former WBC contestant Panama against three newcomers: Brazil, Colombia, and Nicaragua. Apparently determined to return to the tournament proper, Panama enlisted five major leaguers from 2012, the most of any team in the Qualifier. (By way of comparison, Colombia sent three, Nicaragua sent two, and Brazil sent just one.) Phillies All-Star catcher Carlos Ruiz (his suspension for amphetamine use notwithstanding), free agent first baseman Carlos Lee (late of the Astros and Marlins), and Mets shortstop Ruben Tejada led the offense while two Manny relievers (Corpas and Acosta) anchored the bullpen. Also of note were former major leaguers Ruben Rivera (who has spent the last six years roaming center field for the Piratas de Campeche in the Mexican League -- roughly equivalent to the AAA level) and Ramiro Mendoza (who last pitched in 2009 for the Newark Bears of the Atlantic League). With the exception of Acosta, all of the above players represented their home country in 2009 as well.

Unfortunately, none of those notable players contributed to the starting rotation. Bruce Chen pitched for Panama in 2009, when he was between major league clubs, but seeing as he'll have to compete for a spot in the new-look Royals rotation at age 35, he doesn't need to put any more mileage on his arm. Randall Delgado was on the provisional roster in 2009, but at that time he was just 19 years old and two years from reaching the majors. The highest level starter they could manage was Paolo Espino, a reliever for team Panama in '09 who pitched primarily for Cleveland's AA affiliate. And not that he would have impacted the starting rotation, but there's baseball's most famous Panamanian, Mariano Rivera, who was of course unavailable while recovering from knee surgery.

After suffering a loss to upstart Brazil in their first contest, Panama brought itself to the brink of advancement with wins in their next two games. In the first game, they faced a Nicaragua squad led (off) by Padres shortstop (and arguably the best shortstop in the NL West last year) Everth Cabrera. He and game 1 starter Erasmo Ramirez, who started eight games and relieved in eight more in his rookie season for the Mariners, were the lone major leaguers on the squad. The team's top point-scorer (if one were to translate stats from the independent leagues into fantasy points) was infielder Ofilio Castro, a longtime Montreal/Washington farmhand who spent 2012 with the Atlantic League's Sugar Land Skeeters (the same team, incidentally, with which Roger Clemens tried to make a comeback at age 49). The lack of experience showed, as the Nicaraguans were doubly eliminated in just two games. Nicaragua's most famous player, free agent soap bubble-thrower Vicente Padilla, was notably absent from this team.

One of Nicaragua's losses was dealt by the Colombian team, which has the distinction of fielding both current major leaguers named Solano: brothers Donovan and Jhonatan who both made their big league debuts last year. Donovan projects to start at second base next year for Miami while Jhonatan will have to languish as the third or fourth catcher on Washington's depth chart. Fellow backstop Luis Martinez (whose cup of coffee with the Rangers last year represents the only other major league service time on this roster), 2010 World Series MVP Edgar Renteria (who hasn't played professionally since 2011 with the Reds), former utility player Jolbert Cabrera (this squad's cleanup hitter) and Pirates #20 prospect Dilson Herrera round out the interesting players on the offensive side.

Only one Colombian pitcher reached as high as AA last year: Royals farmhand Sugar Ray Marimon, whose name suggests that maybe he should have gotten into boxing instead of baseball. Three big league pitchers born in Colombia could have helped out this club, but all have more important things to worry about: Julio Teheran, Baseball America's #44 ranked prospect, will have to fill in for injured Brandon Beachy to start the Braves' season, Jose Quintana is preparing for his first full campaign as a major league starter with the White Sox, and Ernesto Frieri will have to battle to keep his job as Angels closer when Ryan Madson fully recovers from last year's Tommy John surgery.

But the real story of this qualifying round is Brazil, a country that saw its first ever major league player this year: Yan Gomes, who played catcher and corner infield for the Blue Jays. Shortly before this qualifying round, Gomes was traded to the Indians, but that didn't stop him from batting third and leading his home country's team to a spot in the WBC tournament. This team must have gotten by on heart alone, because the only other notable player on the roster is AA starter Andre Rienzo, the #9 prospect for the White Sox, and one of 13 players featured in an ESPN.com article profiling the best non-MLB players in the WBC. Jumping ahead to the first round, Gomes left his hometown team in favor of his professional team (he's currently hitting .417 in the Cactus League and has a good shot of making the big league roster out of Spring Training), leaving the Brazilians in the less-than-capable hands of Royals AA right fielder Paulo Orlando and Rays low class A infielder Leonardo Reginatto. Against Pool A, Brazil lost all three of its games, but it was nevertheless an inspiring showing from what could be a burgeoning baseball presence.

Brazil's fellow Pool A runner up is China, a difficult team to analyze due to the sheer lack of information available about their players. The only player on the Chinese roster to play in any level of recognized professional ball is cleanup hitter Ray Chang, a shortstop for Minnesota's AAA affiliate. Other than that, we can assume that Luo Xia, Li Xin, and Bu Tao are the team's three best pitchers (they started China's three games) and that Li Lei is a pretty good hitter (he bat third in the order). This team is by far the most enigmatic of the four who convened at the Fukuoka Dome in Japan for Pool A.

The two teams from Pool A that will continue on to Pool 1 are the two-time champion Japan and 2006's runner-up Cuba. They played each other in the middle of the night last night to determine which team is the winner and which the runner-up and Cuba got the best of Japan (it will become important for the seeding later on). I actually saw this same matchup at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 (since we couldn't get tickets to Team USA taking on Korea), but it was cool to see Yu Darvish in action before he transitioned to the majors. Rather than leave myself with nothing to write about during the next round, I'll leave off here and pick up tomorrow with a recap of the ever-exciting Pool B.