The World Baseball Classic draws ever closer! Go here if you missed last night and go below the jump for the latest news!

Warm-up games from last night:

Softbank Hawks (NPB) 2, Brazil 0: Paulo Orlando 0-3. Andre Rienzo 1 IP, 2 H, K

Japan 6, Yomiuri Giants (NPB) 1: Hayato Sakamoto 4-5, 2B, 2 RBI. Seiichi Uchikawa 3-5, BB, 3 RBI

Chinese Taipei 2, NC Dinos (KBO) 1

Australia 6, Taiwanese Military All-Stars 1

Netherlands 4, Taiwanese University All-Stars 1

Also, I didn’t get this up yesterday, but apparently Team Italy has started play with exhibitions against Mariners prospects: they lost their first game but won their second one.

One more leftover from yesterday: Canada’s rotation for round one. Chris Leroux, Shawn Hill and Scott Mathieson are expected to be the starters, although against what teams they will be pitching has not yet been decided. Oh, and according to some sources Joey Votto still hasn’t 100% made up his mind yet as to whether he will be in the WBC, although the fact he doesn’t seem to have had problems in his spring training games has to be a good sign.

And finally, an injury has hit Andres Torres and as a result he won’t be playing for Puerto Rico:

Andre torres will have to miss the wbc due to oblique strain. Was to play for puerto rico. #sfgiants

— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) February 28, 2013

More WBC news later…