Today the Softbank Hawks from Fukuoka beat the Yakult Swallows from Tokyo 5-0 to repeat for the NPB championship, winning the Nippon Series 4-1. . Starting pitcher Jason Standridge needed 82 pitches to get through six innings in which he limited the Swallows to four hits and kept them from scoring. Standridge walked two and…
Today the board members of the KNBSB and the staff of team Kingdom of the Netherlands held a press conference about the creation of the team that will represent the Netherlands and the islands of Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, Saba, St. Eustasius and St. Martin in the upcoming Premier 12 tournament. Host of the event was…
Today it was announced that the Pittsburgh Pirates have extended the Player Development Contract with their AAA affiliate Indianapolis Indians. The Indians are the Pirates AAA team since 2005 and will stay with the Bucs through the 2020 season. The Pirates’ farm system currently ranks 6th. The club is stockpiling talent. Since the Indians joined…
Did anyone of you realize that the 2015 World Series between the New York Mets and the Kansas City Royals will be the first in the history of the Fall Classic in which expansion teams will face each other? There have been World Series in which expansion teams played (and even won) like the 1997 edition…
Last Friday, nine members of the Euro League Baseball met in Amsterdam for the first winter meeting of the league. All representatives decided to give the new league a go but with a different format than the original one. In the original format there was a bi weekly four game schedule in which the games…
After the Yakult Swallows fell 2-4 to the Softbank Hawks in game one, it was time for a battle of the Dutchies in game two. Yesterday Wladimir Balentien went 0 for 3 hitting three groundouts to the shortstop of the Hawks. Today, Rick van den Hurk was masterful for the Softbank Hawks. In eight innings he…
In the past there have been Dutchies who played in the NPB; Hensley Meulens to name one, even won a Nippon Series title with the Yakult Swallows in 1995. Or Andruw Jones and Loek van Mil, who played for the Rakuten Golden Eagles in 2014. But when it comes to Dutchies this year’s Nippon Series…
About half a year ago you could read an article about San Antonio lobbying for a Triple A team on this blog. The biggest hurdle was to move the AA San Antonio Missions to another town and to convince their owner to give up his territorial rights. Another point in this case is to get an AAA team…
A year ago, I wrote about the starvation wages in Minor League Baseball. Depending on the level the players play at, they “earn”an average of $2,500 and are paid $7,500 or less for a season of work. Only the season that is. Spring Training and instructional leagues like the Arizona Fall League are excluded from the…
A few weeks ago, this blog reported about the fact that the Atlantic League would fill the void that the New Britain RockCats left after the team moved to Hartford to become the YardGoats in 2016. There was a lot of talk and suggesting which Atlantic League team would move to New Britain. The name…
