Tag Archives: WBC

Who’s in/out/in-between of the World Baseball Classic as of 8:48 PM of Dec. 17, 2012

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The latest ins and outs for the WBC:

  • As expected of a player with a new team, a history of injury and a love of routine, Josh Hamilton does not expect to play in the World Baseball Classic. Perhaps not an official “no”, but basically everything but an official “no”.
  • Minor League journeyman Gabriel Suarez, of Spanish descent, is “looking forward” to the World Baseball Classic. I’m putting him in the possibly/likely category.
  • According to an article a few days ago in a Venezuelan website, Melvin Mora wants to participate in the WBC for Venezuela, at least if the Google Translation means what I think it does. Mora last played in 2011, and I don’t know if he’d make the team, but for now I’ll place him in the possibly/likely category.

Go below the jump for the full look at who’s in, out and somewhere in-between for the World Baseball Classic.

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Australian All-Star Game: A possible look at Team Australia’s WBC Roster

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The Australian Baseball League’s All-Star Game is coming up, and it pits the league’s best Australian players against the league’s best foreign players. This allows, interestingly, for something of a glimpse of what Australia’s World Baseball Classic team could look like.

The Australian roster for the ABL ASG, which can be found here, has seven players with MLB experience: pitchers Shane Lindsay, Chris Oxspring and Ryan Rowland-Smith, infielders Brad Harman, Luke Hughes and Justin Huber, and outfielder Chris Snelling, who was born in Florida but grew up in Australia. The WBC roster could add Grant Balfour, Rich Thompson and Travis Blackley, but they aren’t playing in the ABL, so they aren’t on this roster.

Some other notable names on the rest of the roster:

Allan De San Miguel, who has been confirmed to be playing in the WBC, is, as I noted back during my August projections for the Aussies, a light-hitting but good-fielding catcher who spent the past year in the Orioles organization.

Stefan Welch, who was in the Pittsburgh system last year, is a utility guy who can player first and third, although he played mainly third last season.

Elliot Biddle and Mitch Dening were also on my projections. Biddle was one of the best hitters in the ABL in 2011, while Dening was a Indy Leaguer in 2012.

Brendan Wise had a tough year in AAA, but he’s done well in the ABL this season so far, and well-deserves the spot he has on the team. He also will likely be on the WBC team.

One of the players who I did not have on my projections who is on the ABL Australian roster is Paul Mildren. Mildren, a lefty, spent eight season in the minors, reaching as high as AAA. However, he eventually washed-out, but is now pitching professionally down under. While he’s only 1-3 with a 5.40 ERA so far this season, there can never be enough lefties, so it’ll be interesting to see if he make the WBC roster.

Another player who wasn’t on my earlier projections? Corey Adamson. The San Diego prospect has been blazing his way in the ABL this season, one of the league’s leaders in batting average.

Overall, the Australians would do okay if they went to the WBC with this all-star-game team, but they’d probably have trouble advancing, since they are in a tough pool with Korea, Taipei and the Netherlands. Of course, in baseball anything can happen, and if enough MLB players take part for the Aussies, they could be a Cinderella team.

You can expect a full new projection for the Baseballroos sometime in the coming days.

In/Out/In-Between of the WBC as of 9:34 PM on December 7, 2012

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To better show the changes to the list, I’ll list the ins/outs and in-between that are new and then, below the jump, there is a list of all of the players who are in or out (or somewhere in between).

Today’s notes:

Angel Pagan will play in the WBC, according to Henry Schulman. As he has not officially been said by the WBC to be in it, I’ve placed him in the possibly/likely.

Brandon Phillips has been asked and is considering it. I’ve placed him in the possibly/likely side.

Johnny Cueto has said he “probably” will pitch for the DR. I’m putting him in possibly/likely.

Marco Scutaro, probably won’t take part, as the 37-year old wants to “save his bullets“.

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As of 10:03 PM of December 4, 2012, here’s who is IN and OUT of the 2013 WBC

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Here’s an update of yesterday’s post. To save space, go after the jump to see the list.

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2013 WBC Provisional Roster Analysis: Japan

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While most of the western WBC teams aren’t going to reveal their full rosters until January, Japan has already come up with a provisional roster of 34 players. Eventually, they will cut it down to 28 players, but for now, here’s an analysis of their provisional roster. As expected, they have no MLB players, due to the fact they all bailed out. Ichiro, for example, may be with a new team and apparently said after the ’09 Classic that he was unlikely to play in it again because he wants to have gone out on top. Yu Darvish is worried about how his body will be after throwing so much last season. Hiroki Kuroda is old.

So, instead, Japan will be sending an NPB all-star team. Many of these guys could play in MLB if they wanted to and some of them still may. One of them- Kazuo Matsui– was once an MLB player. And, of course, they will have been preparing for a month or more for the tournament, as opposed to the week or so that most of the western teams will.

Don’t underestimate them. Instead, go after the jump for my analysis.

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At 8 PM of December 3rd, 2012, here’s who is IN the WBC and who is OUT of the WBC

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Surprisingly, the provisional rosters for the WBC will be released in January this time around, at least for Team USA. I saw some rumors about this earlier, and it mainly has to do with the fact that the teams that had to go through qualifiers and some logistics dealing with the Asian bracket are what delayed it.

Expect the beginnings of more projections in the next few days, but here’s a list of players we KNOW have committed to the World Baseball Classic, as well as who we KNOW to be out. Go after the jump for it.

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WBC News from the Winter Meetings (WILL BE CONSTANTLY UPDATED THROUGHOUT THE DAY)

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This is the Winter Meetings World Baseball Classic update post. I’ll post links and news that I find on Twitter or other online sources about WBC news from the Winter Meetings here. Come back later as more stuff is added.

2:10 PM, Monday: The earliest schedule is up on the WBC website, although not quite complete (some games in the Asian pools are missing), it gives a good idea of what will be going on. Needless to say, there will be early mornings for me in March.

Next off, Chien-Ming Wang will be playing for Taipei in the WBC as a way to showcase himself for teams.

And finally, we have confirmation that Andruw Jones will play for the Netherlands.

3:24 PM, Monday: The schedule for the WBC on the website is no longer there, suggesting to me that somebody put it up before it was supposed to. Joe Torre will apparently be speaking later today, and although it likely will include lots of stuff about his role in the MLB front office, he will surely talk about his role as the manager of Team USA as well.

4:06 PM, Monday: WBC has released an early sheet of some of the notable players who will be playing for each country, although they seem to limit it to a maximum of two per country, presumably to save space on the list.

MLB players on the list include Liam Hendriks and Grant Balfour (for Australia- Balfour is a surprise since he hasn’t pitched for them in past WBCs), Yan Gomes (Brazil), Justin Morneau (Canada), Robinson Cano and Jose Reyes for the DR, Alex Liddi and Italian-American Jason Grilli for Italy, Adrian Gonzalez and Sergio Romo for Mexico, Andruw Jones and Roger Bernadina for the Netherlands, Yadier Molina and Carlos Beltran for PR, David Wright and Joe Mauer for the USA, and Miguel Cabrera and Pablo Sandoval for Venezuela.

4:26 PM, Monday: This is weird. The previous list has been replaced with this one, which has some differences. For example, it replaces Hendriks and Balfour with Ryan Rowland-Smith and Luke Hughes, it adds Brett Lawrie to Canada, it confirms Chien-Ming Wang for Taipei and replaces Sergio Romo with Jaime Garcia. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps the first one they put up was a first draft or something.

More news if it comes out.

WBC Roster Watch: The first indications of the 2013 Dominican Republic Roster?

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The Dominican Republic national team has a official Twitter feed. It’s in Spanish, of course, but thanks to the internet, here’s what it had to say yesterday, according to Google Translate:

Tony Pena, as a leader, will lead the coaching staff Dominican.

Felix Fermin bench coach Alfredo Griffin first, Juan Samuel third, Bill Castro Launchers …

Denio Gonzales Jose Cano Hitting and Pitching, complete the team’s coaching staff.

Edwin Encarnacion, Willin Rosario, Octavio Dotel, Starlin Mars, and Carlos Santana, attended the activity.

Besides them, Ervin Santana, Edinson Volquez, Carlos Gomez, among others, were present.

General manager @ MoisesAlou18 said other players like A. Pujols, could not attend, but given the support

In short, here’s what it means:

Tony Pena will be the manager of ’13 DR team. Felix Fermin will be the bench coach, Alfredo Griffin the third base coach, etc.

And, more notably, there were some players who attended the news conference about the coaching staff. Here they are, and keep in mind my previous projections for Team DR:
Edwin Encarnacion
Wilin Rosario
Octavio Dotel
Starlin Marte
Carlos Santana
Ervin Santana
Edinson Volquez
Carlos Gomez

Rosario, Dotel, Carlos Santana, Volquez and Carlos Gomez all were in my projections, as was Albert Pujols, who wasn’t at the press conference but apparently gave Moises Alou his “support”, so I guess that means he’d presumably be willing to play as well.

So does this mean that all of these guys will be on the Dominican Republic roster? No, but this news does confirm that all of them are at least interested, and so presumably will be on the provisional rosters when they are released next week. So I guess it could be considered a preview of a preview.

Coming soon: All-New WBC projections

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Next week, at the Winter Meetings, the provisional rosters of the World Baseball Classic will be announced. Essentially, these are lists of players who have indicated they will take part if asked. This does not necessarily mean they will ultimately take part (as there is always the risk of a late injury or change of heart), nor that those who aren’t on them won’t (as, again, there could always be a change of heart if it comes early enough).

Once these are released, I will be going through them and creating another round of predicted rosters for the World Baseball Classic, working entirely from the provisional rosters. This will mean Team USA projections version 3.0, Dominican Republic 3.0, Venezuela 2.0, Canada 2.0 and plenty of other projections.

So stay tuned next week!

2013 WBC Team USA projections Version 2.011

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(EDITED IN ON DEC. 31: As of this writing, the most recent projection for the United States can be found here.)

With more stuff coming out about what players might or might not be taking part in the WBC, here’s another update of how Team USA looks. As we get closer to the tournament and some players start to drop out (Chris Sale, for example, has said he will probably won’t take part), it becomes clear that America’s best strength is it’s depth. Other countries have a line of superstars, but not much below that, but Team USA has a player pool that lets it take a licking but keep on ticking. Sale is out, you say? Well, there’s still plenty of good lefty starters like Gio Gonzalez, Wade Miley, Matt Harrison, C.J. Wilson, Madison Bumgarner, Cliff Lee, Derek Holland….

You get the idea.

This version, VERSION 2.011, includes the official coaching staff of Team USA, as confirmed by MLB’s official website.

A refresher on my selection rules/assumptions:

  • Any player coming off a major injury or who has a history of injuries is unlikely to participate. This is especially true for the pitchers.
  • Players that will be on new teams are less likely to participate, but shouldn’t be completely ignored, with the exception of pitchers.
  • Teams are made up of 28 players, of which 13 of them must be pitchers and two of them catchers.
  • The pitch count rules make relievers extremely important.

Now, go after the jump for the full look:

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