Results tagged ‘ Dominican Republic ’
Mixed fortunes for European teams
The WBC games on Monday saw Italy and the Netherlands facing the hosts of their respective pools.
Italy caused an upset by winning in Toronto 6-2 and knocking Canada out of the tournament. It was an impressive display by the Italians and particularly by Chris Denorfia. The latter is perhaps not the most Italian person in the world, but he does have a legitimate claim to be on the team thanks to his paternal grandmother.
It was a great win for Italy and their fans will be especially proud of the contributions made by players from their own league.
Giuseppe Mazzanti of Danesi Nettuno went 2 for 5 against Canada, following up his domestic 2008 season when he won the batting title in the Italian Baseball League. Second baseman Davide Dallospedale, who plays for Cariparma, went 1 for 4 with an RBI and a run, while Chris Cooper of Grosetto pitched 2.2 effective innings.
Italy now face Venezuela for a place in the second round.
The Netherlands will also be in a ’winner progresses-loser goes home’ game after they lost 3-1 to Puerto Rico. In their previous game, the Dutch took an early lead and held on to beat the Dominican Republic in stunning fashion. It looked like the same tactic may work for a second time, as the Netherlands scored a run in the second inning and spent the rest of the game trying their best to hold on to the advantage.
This time they couldn’t quite manage it, despite a good start by Marlins’ pitcher Rick van den Hurk, and a big three-run eighth inning saw Puerto Rico delight their home crowd with a win that sees them through to the next round.
The Dutch now have to face the Dominican Republic again, only this time the latter will be out for revenge! It would be no surprise if David Ortiz and his fellow Major Leaguers made their greater ability and experience pay, but the Netherlands can go into the game knowing that they have beaten their opponents before so they can do it again.
Whatever happens in their next games, both Italy and the Netherlands have given a good account of themselves and European baseball as whole in this WBC.
For more info on European baseball, be sure to check out www.mister-baseball.com .
More Classic baseball
The World Baseball Classic provided another group of exciting games on Sunday.
I wasn’t able to watch any of them live, which meant that this morning served as a trial run for the season ahead. As a British baseball fan, the morning MLB.com visit becomes part of your daily routine. You wake up, fix yourself some breakfast and then log on to see what happened in MLB while you were asleep.
Invariably this will start with a visit to your chosen team’s home page. As the page loads, you cross your fingers and repeat in your mind “win, win, win” before the outcome of the previous night’s game finally reveals itself. It can either get your day off to a bad start or see you heading off to work with a spring in your step. As an A’s fan, the balance of grumpy and happy days leaned firmly towards the former last year, but I’m hopeful that 2009 may be different.
Anyway, this morning’s MLB.com visit led me straight to the four WBC Recap clips.
The big shock was Australia’s thumping win over Mexico. It is always dangerous to count out the Aussies. Their sporting pedigree is second to none, as any English cricket/rugby fan can testify. After winning the silver medal in the 2004 Olympics (demoting a very talented Japanese team – including Dice-K, Kuroda, Fukudome and Jojima - into third place), Australia fell back to earth with a bump when they failed to even qualify for the 2008 event. Of course, the make-up of the team changes slightly when the WBC comes around, but I thought they might see this as an opportunity to put that disappointment behind them and they’ve certainly started off in impressive fashion.
Elsewhere, Cuba had a comfortable win over South Africa, the Dominican Republic put their opening defeat to the Netherlands behind them with a 9-0 victory over Panama (sending the latter out of the WBC) and America booked their place in round two with a resounding 15-6 win over Venezuela.
The highlight of the day was Adam Dunn’s bomb to right field at the Rogers Center. While it was great news for the Nationals, I’m still mystified as to why a play-off contender (and I’m sure Nats fans won’t take offense at me taking their team out of that bracket) didn’t pick him up. A two year/$20m contract looks very reasonable. Although he is poor in the field, Dunn’s production will outstrip what the majority of AL teams will get from their DH spot this season.
In particular, he would have made a massive difference to the Twins’ batting lineup. It’s easy to focus on deals that are made and which go wrong, but sometimes the more costly decisions are where you take a pass on a player.
Dunn’s WBC performance may have a few GM’s questioning whether they made a mistake this off-season.
However, that’s for later. Right now, Korea and Japan have just started the latest instalment in what’s becoming an epic rivalry. Korea will be out for revenge after their loss via the ‘mercy’ rule a couple of days ago.
The games just keep on coming. It’s a great time of year.
Netherlands beat the Dominican Republic
Wow!
The Netherlands have just completed a stunning 3-2 victory over their star-laden opponents. They scratched out three runs in the first inning thanks to a wild pitch by Edinson Volquez and a throwing error by Hanley Ramirez, and that was all the run support they needed.
There were a few nervy moments along the way, but the Dutch were always going to need a bit of luck to come out on top. They pitched out of jams, turned a few timely defensive plays and closed the door at the end.
It looked like the Dominican Republic were going to rescue the situation when Willy Taveras was stood on second in the top of the ninth. So often you see a near-dramatic victory get taken away from a team. Not this time. Taveras made an ill-advised attempt to steal third and he was gunned down by catcher Kenley Jansen. The MLB.tv announcers had spoken about how impressive the Dodger prospect’s arm was and he gave us a demonstration in a spirit-crushing play.
The scene at the end said it all. The Netherlands celebrated like they had won the WBC; that’s how much this victory meant to them.
Europe’s top team has done the continent proud.
Honkball reigns supreme!
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