Snobs vs. Slobs

This story is pretty appropriate. As you may or may not know, the WBC used Olympic-style testing to rid the tournament of illegal stuff drugs, which includes (I believe) most narcotics illegal in the U.S. in addition to steroids, andro, HGH, etc. The Olympic-style testing is much more diligent than the MLB testing and it is very difficult to get a waiver, such as Derek Lowe’s Ritalin waiver for his ADD. (more…)

I suspect, if you’re reading this site, you already know that the Japanese beat the Cubans 10-6 last night in the WBC final. Cuban starter Ormani Romero only three 11 of his total 23 pitches for strikes, walking one guy, hitting a guy and giving up three earned runs in one third of an inning.

Still, it’s probably best to look at the WBC for more than just Cuba v. Japan. It is, after all, the World Baseball Classic and 14 other teams were in this thing. Because writing cohesive paragraphs is hard, let’s examine it via pros and cons. (more…)

The brilliant Nate Silver of Baseball Prospectus recently wrote a “Lies, Damned Lies” column for the site titled Another Look at Plate Discipline in which he examines the nature of plate discipline. (more…)

I know the biggest story of yesterda is that the U.S. lost. Hee Seop Choi hit a big three-run bomb in the game and has been one of Korea’s big sluggers throughout the tournament. Tough to not root for Big Choi. (more…)

Sadaharu Oh is angry and I can’t blame him.

“Of course, I’m furious.”

The overwhelming fact is that the U.S. should have lost to the Japanese in Sunday’s game. Without a big home-field advantage helper from the umps, Japan wins that game 4-3. (more…)

Canada turned back into a pumpkin last night, losing to the Well-Dressed Mexicans 9-1. Rockies farmhand Jeff Francis gave up a staggering six runs in 1.3 innings and the Canucks had no way of getting back in it. This likely eliminates Canada from the tournament and likely gets the Americans in. The Americans need to beat South Africa today behind Roger Clemens, which strikes me as pretty likely. (more…)

I’ve found that cognitive dissonance in sports fandom is a strange experience. You go into a game sure of the outcome and when it doesn’t happen, you can’t wrap your mind around it. In a positive way, that is how I felt when the Sox won the World Series this past year, andI felt it yesterday during the U.S.A/Canada game. (more…)

While many are trashing the WBC, yesterday was the first day of serious action in the tournament. As we previewed yesterday, there were five games yesterday and I watched most or parts of all of them. (more…)

So I went home for lunch today (one of the benefits of living a fifteen-minute walk away from your office) to watch some of the Dominican Republic vs. Venezuela game, and not only has the baseball been really good so far (currently 2-1 DR in the fifth), as you might expect with pitchers like Santana and Zambrano facing off against the likes of Tejada, Pujols and Ortiz, but the crowd is REALLY into it, and (more importantly) the players are, too. We’ll have to see if the Americans (and the other good teams) are this excited, but if they are, the WBC is going to be a lot of fun. I’d still rather see it played in November. And on the whole, the jury is still out. Even if all the teams are into it, it still doesn’t mean it will be a success. But even if the Latinos are the only ones who are into it, this is still really fun to watch.

With two games today featuring the top three teams, the WBC is really ramping up. The U.S. gets the well-dressed Mexicans at 4 p.m. in Arizona. I imagine they’ll win, but youneverknow. Mexico has Rodrigo Lopez going against Jake “My arm might just fall off” Peavy for the Americans. (more…)