21U World Baseball Cup-End of Round 1

Early this morning in Taiwan, the first round of the 21U World Baseball Cup came to a close. This is the last IBAF affiliated event before the first year of the Premier 12. Entering the championship, a couple of teams playing outside of the 12 had their eye on the potential 12th spot: Mexico (13th) and Australia (15th). I think it was probably safe to say as well, that most people were expecting strong performances from Korea and Chinese Taipei in Group A and Japan in Group B. The rest was up for grabs. 

First of all, in Group B, Nicaragua has been playing with a fury that reminds us of a form they have not had in international play since the 90s. Secondly, teams that we would have expected to do well, like Netherlands, Mexico, and Venezuela, have been run over. 

The first big surprise was New Zealand. After losing out the first game to Italy, New Zealand posted wins over Mexico and the Czech Republic before taking their second loss in the tournament to Chinese Taipei. Italy had taken a game against Mexico as well, but ended up losing to the Czech Republic 3-1 in game 4 and faced Chinese Taipei in game 5. Two parts of the next steps came completely as a surprise, at least to me.

First of all, New Zealand almost pulled it out. They almost overcame Korea, and they took the game lead into the 9th inning before Korea pulled off that last minute rally. It was that. close. Italy dropped 6-0 to Taipei, so no great surprise there. What did happen unexpectedly was the Czech Republic not only winning over Mexico 12-9, but they tied up with New Zealand and Italy and overcame their run difference to advance to the next stage. 

So from Group A's teams being South Korea, Chinese Taipei, and the Czech Republic, and Group B being Japan, Nicaragua, and Australia. 

The standings from the games inbetween these teams will stand to the next round, and likewise to the teams who did not advance, who will play in a consolation round. 

So with these results, and with continued success, New Zealand (25), Czech Republic (26), and Nicaragua (28) should all see some major movement in their world rank. Likewise, Mexico may be looking at a drop. Australia has the potential to move in, and even with the current level of play Venezuela is unlikely to lose their spot. We'll keep looking as it all progresses, a few blogs (like Dutch Yankee Biscuit) have been covering the highlights better than I'm able, so I just wanted to post my thoughts on this in particular. 

Now, aside from this I wanted to note that I will be doing some write-ups on baseball in a few countries we aren't covering scores from right now: Sweden, South Africa, Poland, and France. I had been seeing some people coming to the blog from a few of those countries (and welcome), so I thought, "What's baseball like in Sweden", and going from there. Watch this space!