2013 WBC: Qualifying Round Announced

[MiamiHomer]

jonmorosi Jon Morosi
#MLB announces expansion of 2013 World Baseball Classic to 28 teams, with new 16-team qualifying round.

Twitter.

[Omar]

Twitter.

Yes! The WBC continues its march into awesomeness.

[Party]

The World Baseball Classic is coming to a location that's probably nowhere near you. Next scheduled for 2013, the tournament will expand from 16 to 28 teams and add a qualifying round in Fall 2012. The 12 new entries plus the four that did not win a game in the 2009 event -- Canada, Chinese Taipei, Panama and South Africa -- will participate.

WBC organizers -- a.k.a. Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association -- are accepting bids to host games not only for the 16-team Classic in March 2013, but also the qualifying round of four double-elimination pools scheduled for Fall 2012.

No player born in four of the new countries -- Brazil, Israel, New Zealand and Thailand -- has reach the major leagues. But as long ago as 1992, the Blue Jays signed Pett, then a 16-year-old pitcher, to a contract with a $700,000 bonus. He got as far as Class AAA with the Toronto and Pittsburgh organizations.

That's about the same time the Angels signed a player from New Zealand, a couple from Russia and one from Guam. No word when the Russians will get into the WBC.

More recently, the Tampa Bay Rays have invested in an academy in Marilia, Brazil and several Brazilian players have played in the Dominican and Venezuela summer. leagues.

But these are the true outliers in a gradual development of baseball around the world. And it might as well be the WBC doing it, since baseball has been dumped by the Olympics.

Colombia and Nicaragua are the only new WBC teams who have home-grown and trained major leaguers. You can find ex-big leaguers with birthplaces in the rest of the new countries but most of them were either children of U.S. military personnel temporarily stationed overseas or sons of late-19th and early-20th Century immigrants. None of them received their baseball training in their birth countries.

The other new teams are the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Great Britain, Philippines and Spain.

For the rare few -- maybe an eager travel agent or two -- who'd like to speculate on groupings for the Qualifying Round, a logical quartet would be four from among Great Britain, France, Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic in Europe. But that would leave one of those five plus Israel to fill out a Western Hempishere group with Brazil, Colombia and Nicaragua, and a Pacific group with New Zealand, Philippines and Thailand.

The 12 teams that skip the qualifying round are the USA, two-time defending champion Japan, Australia, China, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Puerto Rico and Venezuela.

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...iland-israel/1

Oh man this is really cool. Maybe the Brits will throw a few cricket players on their team.

[Chewford]

Uh oh, the Germans are coming.

[Namaste]

oWOW this is so awesome
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Any talk of Miami getting in on this again?

[Omar]

Last the Marlins talked about it, there was going to be a large push to host the 2013 Final in the new digs

[dgriot]

Uh oh, the Germans are coming.

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRTngtsOY8Q[/ame]

[Erick]

The United States should consider a different guy to pick the team this time around. Whoever it was last time shouldn't be the same guy this time.

Maybe we'd go with something close to our A team with someone else picking the team.

Seriously, no country can beat the United States A team.

[Bobbob1313]

From what I remember, a lot of guys declined.

[Erick]

From what I remember, a lot of guys declined.

The pitching selections were pretty bad.

I'm sure plenty of people declined but there had to be better guys out there than Matt Lindstrom, John Grabow, LaTroy Hawkins, Jeremy Guthrie, etc.

The United States is loaded with pitching.

In terms of pitching, the United States D team might be better than the best possible pitching staffs any other country can throw out there.

[Bobbob1313]

There was a ton of talk after the first WBC about guys being thrown off or hurt because of their participation. I'm certain that scared a ton of guys off. Matt Lindstrom wasn't their first choice.

[Erick]

There was a ton of talk after the first WBC about guys being thrown off or hurt because of their participation. I'm certain that scared a ton of guys off. Matt Lindstrom wasn't their first choice.

Matt Lindstrom should've been one of the last choices...

Even if they had to settle for middle relievers, I'm sure I can name a bunch of middle relievers who are better. I'm sure I can also name a bunch of average starters who are better, as well.

[Bobbob1313]

They probably didn't ask any of them.

[Party]

So I'm supposed to be excited about mediocre MLB players competing with amateurs?

And the possibility of Matt Die-az playing for Spain.

[Namaste]

So I'm supposed to be excited about mediocre MLB players competing with amateurs?

You've been a real ray of positivity lately.

You having a bad year or something?