Recently you could read my opinion about the World Baseball and Softball Confederation. The global governing body for baseball and softball is nothing more than a Riccardo Fraccari show. This year’s Premier 12 shows this even more.
The governing body that is boasting it is promoting baseball does more harm than it does good. Why did the WBSC decide to reduce the number of innings for international games starting after the Premier 12? Tell me how this is helping baseball? The whole structure of the game will be changed because of this and it is not for the good. All Fraccari wants is to flatter the IOC in an attempt to make baseball an Olympic sport again. But you can bet on it that baseball as an Olympic sport is a stillborn as long as MLB will not send its best players.
When you look to the world ranking, especially to the way the countries can earn their points for this ranking, you can only say this is laughable. The WBSC is awarding more points to the participants of its own Premier 12 tournament than to the participants of the World Baseball Classic. Be honest, compared to the World Baseball Classic, which fields the best players in the world, the Premier 12 is only a second-grade tournament. Also for this tourney, MLB does not allow players on forty-men rosters to participate.
As long as the World Baseball Classic is growing, the Premier 12 isn’t of any significance. Sure the money that can be won is good, but it remains a weird situation that Europe didn’t have the chance to qualify through this tournament.
Today, with the game between Taiwan and Venezuela, the WBSC mixed up the lineups of both teams. If that wasn’t enough, the box score of the game between Mexico and the Kingdom of the Netherlands was also quite a mess. According to the box score, the Netherlands used nine pitchers but the Dutch used ten instead. Also in the play-by-play, it was mentioned that center fielder Roger Bernadina committed a throwing error but in fact, that was right fielder Kalian Sams, who scooped the ball right in front of Bernadina.
Also, the number of runs of the game between Mexico and the Kingdom of the Netherlands was a cause for raising one’s eyebrows. Mexico scored ten runs in the game but according to the box score, the Dutch pitchers allowed only eight.
If the WBSC really wants to be the representative board for baseball, it really must get its act together. Right now it is nothing more than a chromium-plated package of scrap.
Package of scrap. Sounds like the Dutch performance. (no offence, not much more could be reasonably expected)
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I never expected much in this group. But the Dutch pitching was vastly underperforming for sure. And when one leaves 12 runners on base, you cannot expect much.
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