In their first match, Kingdom of the Netherlands beat up Israel, that isn’t all that good without American imports. Until the seventh inning, Israel could keep pace but in the seventh, the Dutch offense exploded to beat their opponent 18-0.
The Dutch took a 1-0 lead in the first inning. Raidley Legito got on base thanks to a throwing error and advanced to second on a wild pitch. A groundout to first base, made him advance to third base, from where he scored on a single by Mees Robberse.
In the second inning, Luca Pastor drew a walk, advanced to second on a wild pitch and scored on Mart Blijleven’s single single to center field.
After a scoreless third, the Dutch would score a run in the fourth, fifth, and sixth before their offense exploded in the seventh. In fact it wasn’t the Dutch offense that exploded but merely the Israeli defense that imploded. Four walks, three wild pitches, a HBP, and a fielding error put runners on base and allowed the Dutch to score besides the extra base hits they collected. With the bases loaded, Sebastiaan van der Horst doubled to left field and drove in three runs. With the bases loaded once again, Jesse Velders tripled to left center field and drove in three runs. If the game wasn’t decided yet, Sem Kuijpers homered to left center field and took two base runners with him to reach the final score.
Stijn van der Schaaf pitched two innings in relief and earned the win. He gave up two hits and struck out as many. Itai Spinoza took the loss. He lasted five innings and gave up four runs (two earned) on four walks and four strikeouts.
Mart Blijleven was the best Dutch hitter as he went 2 for 3 with an RBI and a run scored.
Despite the monster score, the Dutch collected only nine hits. But the big score can be explained partially by the six errors the Israeli defense committed.
Dutch Baseball Hangout 