Welcome Premier12: you were fun, you still have a long way to go

Riccardo Schiroli reporting in Tokyo (Japan)

Korea has been one of the great international powers of the third millennium baseball scene. They have won at the 18U level, they made the championship game of the 2009 World Baseball Classic (and lost in the extra innings against Japan) and they are the last winner of an Olympic gold medal (Bejing 2008). Still, nobody picks them as their first choice as a winner.

You may not like the managerial style of Kim In Sik, and it’s hard to confront him as much as it’s hard to find someone who can master the English and the Korean language, so to help you communicate with him, but you have to be aware of the fact that he will put on the field a team that is strong in discipline and plays fundamental baseball. Korea won’t beat themselves, so you’d better score runs on your own if you want to defeat them. Because they will score and won’t give you anything for free.

Team USA Willie Randolph was very honest on Saturday night: “We got beaten” he admitted “They swung the bat well, ran well and their pitching was great”.
There’s not much else you can do, to be good in baseball. And what is really amazing of the korean performance is that Team USA played a very good game defensively. They escaped a couple of jams thanks to double plays manufactured through perfect throws from outfielders and their shortstop Elliot Soto jumped everywhere, trying to avoid balls from getting to the outfield. Korean pitchers also showed that you do not need to overpower anybody if you want to be effective. Starter Kwang Hyun Kim barely used his 90+ mile per hour four seam fastball. He fed Team USA line up with a lot of breaking balls, off speed stuff, 2 seamers on the hands. He kept them off balance.
Willie Randolph’s pitchers did not commit to the same strategy. In Sik Kim and his staff knew that it would have been the case and isntructed Korea hitters: be aggressive on their fastball. First baseman Byung Ho Park, who will start negotiating a deal with the Minnesota Twins soon, actually got his home run on a hanging slider. “We didn’t execute well a pitch on him” said Randolph, who had indicated the previous night Park as the most dangerous hitter of the Korean side. “If he fits the american style of hitting and can be effective in the Big Leagues, you should ask the scouts” added Randolph.
Team USA actually managed to unload the weapons of feared designated hitter Dae Ho Lee, but was knocked down by the top of the order, expecially by left fielder Hyun Soo Kim, who is less known because he plays in the korean league (or KBO) and has less chances to be hit by spotlight, but is an old fashioned all field hitter with a short, compact and still powerful swing that can adjust to almost everything and will be absolutely dangerous in fast ball counts.

The first edition of the Premier12 goes to the archives leaving us with mixed feelings. The final days in Tokyo have been as big as international baseball has ever been. But that was Tokyo and the Samurai Japan were on the field.

The rest of the world involved in international baseball (the Major Leagues, as we'll see, at the moment aren't) does not belong to that level. I am not obviously talking baseball (or not only), because I saw myself that 2 teams did better than the Samurai in this tournament. What I mean is the level of organization and of fame. I mean: we shouldn’t believe we brought international baseball at the level of the Samurai Japan and the japanese Big Leagues (or NPB) just because we played at the Tokyo Dome and shared their hotel. If international baseball and its governing body WBSC (World Baseball Softball Confederation) want to get to that level, they will have to take a look in depth to what happened in the previous 2 weeks, instead of mirroring themselves in the Tokyo Dome atmosphere. Above all, international baseball has to build a different relation with Major League Baseball. It is not going to help if MLB franchises have their tournament (the World Baseball Classic) and NPB franchises have theirs (the Premier12). So, let’s put the player’s unions of both leagues at a table and avoid that one of the finalists has 3 players pulled out of the gold medal game (I am talking of Brett Eibner, J.B. Wendelke and Jake Barrett of Team USA) because the deadline for 40 man roster moves in the Major Leagues is just hours before the Premier12 championship game. I am not talking big issue here. I am not saying “we need to convince everybody to send the superstars”. I am just saying: get together and check the calendar, before picking dates.
Talking about dates, the Fall may not be the best time of the year to compete internationally for the Americas, since the Winter Leagues happen in Central America and the Caribbean October through January.

Welcome, Premier12. You were fun. You still have a long way to go.

Cover picture is courtesy of WBSC