World Baseball Classic: Round 1, Pool C Recap

There are still two games left to in Pool C play, but thanks to the ridiculous Round Robin format of the first round, it's already been determined who will advance. While it's kind of silly that one game out of three in the pool is just to determine seeding between winners, at least Pool C won't have to rely on the laughable tie-breaker scenario (Team Quality Balance, or TQB) that saw Chinese Taipei and the Netherlands advance over Korea just due to their run differentials in head-to-head games. I mentioned this oddity in my last recap, and Deadspin also picked up on it, now that it contributed to causing a brawl in one of yesterday's Pool D games.

And since one half of Round 2 is already happening, it's especially frustrating to see the Round Robin debacle play out next to the much more satisfying and definitive Modified Double Elimination format they're using halfway across the world. But I guess that's hard to implement without some sort of seeding system, which can't be in place unless some games have been played already. So while it's an imperfect system, I guess we'll just have to put up with the complicated math and the occasional moment of tempers flaring.

But back to actual baseball. As with each of the first round pools, Pool C has its roots in a qualifying round -- Qualifier 1, to be exact, which took place last September (yes, during the regular season, strangely enough) in Jupiter, Florida's Roger Dean Stadium. This pool included last tournament's participant South Africa and newcomers Israel, France, and Spain. Despite its appearance in the previous contest, South Africa's roster had only two players who spent significant time in Major League organizations last year: starter Dylan Unsworth, who racked up 58 points per game in Seattle's low-A affiliate, and Gift Ngoepe, a shortstop for high-A Bradenton in Pittsburgh's system. France is probably the European country with the least robust baseball tradition of any of these teams, so it makes sense that they had only one player who played with an affiliated club last season: catcher Andy Paz, who has played with the Dominican Summer League's Athletics the last two seasons. (However, corner infield combo Rene Leveret and Carlos Hereaud both tore it up for teams in different independent leagues, scoring 14.4 and 15.4 points per game, respectively.)

On paper, it seemed, strangely enough, that Israel had the strongest roster, with only one player (Shlomo Lipetz, who would have been in for best name of the tournament had his team advanced) not currently signed to a major league affiliate or who had not spent time in the majors. Their most notable players were former All-Star outfielder Shawn Green (who, at age 40, was limited to DH duties for team Israel), right fielder Joc Pederson (the #3 prospect for the Dodgers and #85 prospect overall according to MLB.com, although he did not crack Baseball America's list), and second baseman Jack Marder (Seattle's #17 prospect, who absolutely mashed high-A level pitching to the tune of 21.4 PPG). Nate Freiman, first baseman for San Diego's AA affiliate was the team's second-highest point scorer (to Pederson) with 1,900 even. However, only one pitcher on the squad reached AAA (Cleveland's Eric Berger), only one broke 30 PPG (game 2 starter Justin Schumer of San Francisco's high-A affiliate) and only one approached 850 total points (reliever Jeff Urlaub, who split time between A and A+ in Oakland's system).

Israel did indeed play in the final elimination game (since this round was also Modified Double Elimination, the final game actually had meaning), but Spain came out on top (even though Israel had more players on its roster affiliated with major league clubs) and advanced to Round 1 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Geographically, Spain is the clear outlier, as the other three teams -- Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic -- are all located in the Caribbean. Spain's top affiliated player was Texas's AA center fielder Engel Beltre who led off all seven games between the qualifiers and the first round. Their cleanup hitter Barbaro Canizares led the charge, scoring more than 2,300 points playing mostly with Oaxaca in the Mexican League. The only other player on the offense who spent the all of last year with a major league organization was Washington's single-A catcher Adrian Nieto.

All three Round 1 pitchers were affiliated with major league clubs, for at least part of last year, but none of them made any top prospect lists. Sergio Perez was a reliever with Houston's AAA affiliate, Yoanner Negrin pitched for the Cubs briefly before moving to the Mexican League's Tabasco, and Richard Castillo, the club's pitching point leader, started primarily for St. Louis's AA team. Richard Salazar, who scored a team-high 46.7 PPG with Sioux City of the Independent American Association, started an exhibition game before the proceedings and has figured in as an important reliever. The only player, offensive or defensive, to make the majors in 2012 was Houston's Rhiner Cruz. Unfortunately, Spain lost all three of its Round 1 matches, including today's game, which took place after they had already been eliminated from Round 2 play.

Their opponent in that game - Venezuela - had also been eliminated, which is surprising given the wealth of major league talent on their roster. All players in their lineup were not just starters for MLB teams last year, but eight of the nine were damn good ones. At the forefront is clearly last year's AL MVP and triple crown winner Miguel Cabrera, who moved back to his former position of first base to accomodate his World Series opponent Pablo Sandoval. Cabrera is one of only four offensive holdovers from Venezuela's last WBC squad: catcher Ramon Hernandez (who this year fell to third on the depth chart behind Miguel Montero and Salvador Perez), Marco Scutaro (who was a shortstop back then, but now shared second base with Omar Infante), and Gerardo Parra (who rode the bench last time, but now roamed center field between Rockies slugger Carlos Gonzalez and third baseman turned back to left fielder for this tournament Martin Prado. On s historical note: last WBC, those two positions were occupied by Bobby Abreu and Magglio Ordonez, respectively. No slouches indeed. The shortstop field is by far the most improved position on this roster, as all field no hit Cesar Izturis is replaced by a pair of All-Stars Elvis Andrus and Asdrubal Cabrera.

None of the major league starting pitchers from 2009 made repeat appearances, which is too bad because last year's staff included Felix Hernandez. Now that he's the highest paid pitcher in history, he doesn't need to waste his time with silly international exhibitions. 2009's staff also included Armando Galarraga and Carlos Silva, who were effectively replaced by Anibal Sanchez and Carlos Zambrano -- there is of course no replacing King Felix, although the additions Jhoulys Chacin and Henderson Alvarez gave this team more major league starters than the last. Back in 2009, Venezuela's closer Francisco Rodriguez was one of the best in the business, but now he's struggling to find a job in the majors. Once again, the addition of Ronald Belisario gives this year's team Venezuela one more established major league reliever than they had the last time.

Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic are playing right now to decide to will have the better seed in next week's Round 2, Pool 2. They will be playing the top two teams in Round 1, Pool D, whose action also wraps up today.