Day two of the Olympic baseball tournament saw the United States and Japan put their first wins on the board, while Cuba made it two wins out of two and the rain was the victor in the other game between Korea and China.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the day was blotted somewhat by a controversial decision to bring an early end to the game between the U.S. and the Netherlands.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n
The\u00c2\u00a0United States\u00c2\u00a0won 7-0 and there is no argument about the fairness of the final outcome.\u00c2\u00a0 The Dutch were totally dominated by the American’s\u00c2\u00a0starting pitcher, Stephen Strasburg, who flirted with a no-hitter before ending up with a stunning pitching line of seven innings pitched, one hit allowed, with one walk given up and eleven strikeouts.\u00c2\u00a0 Strasburg came into the tournament commanding a lot of attention as the only college player on the U.S. roster.\u00c2\u00a0 The right-hander out of San Diego State showed exactly why he has been widely tipped to be a top pick in next year’s amateur draft and it is not being disrespectful to say that the Dutch were simply overmatched in the contest.<\/p>\n
Even so, the Netherlands came out of the game feeling slightly hard done by.\u00c2\u00a0 After being shutout by Chinese Taipei in their opening game, the Dutch were understandably\u00c2\u00a0keen to stop their score-less slide, not least because run differential is one of the factors taken into account when separating sides with the same win-loss record in the final standings.\u00c2\u00a0 What the official box score<\/a> doesn’t show is that they loaded the bases in the ninth inning with no outs, only for the heavens to open again, sending the players off the field.\u00c2\u00a0 This was the second time the game was delayed for a substantial period of time and the organizers decided simply to call the game after eight innings.\u00c2\u00a0 The Netherlands’ great chance to break their scoring duck was lost and the three batters who reached base saw their efforts being erased from the record books.\u00c2\u00a0 Their manager, Robert Eenhoorn, was quoted on MLB.com<\/a> summing up his post-game thoughts: “Overall, the USA deserved to win. It’s just a strange end to the game. That’s the only thing I don’t feel great about”.<\/p>\n In fairness to the organizers, they were placed in a difficult position by the heavy rain during the morning in Beijing.\u00c2\u00a0 The game between China and Korea ended up being postponed with the score tied at 0-0 during the sixth inning.\u00c2\u00a0 It looks likely that they will simply pick up where they left off on Sunday 17th (originally a ‘rest day’).\u00c2\u00a0 After being hammered by Canada in their opening game, China were putting up an excellent fight against the team who had impressively beaten the U.S. the day before.\u00c2\u00a0 The home nation will certainly be keen for their promising first five innings to carry over.<\/p>\n Both of the evening games were played to a completion.\u00c2\u00a0 Cuba improved their record to 2-0, but were given a real scare by Canada.\u00c2\u00a0 Having taken a 3-0 lead in the bottom of the second inning, the Cubans found themselves down 5-3 heading into the bottom of the sixth.\u00c2\u00a0 Cleveland Indians’ twenty year old\u00c2\u00a0 Single-A batter Nick Weglarz smashed two home runs for the Canadians, with Michael Saunders (from the Seattle Mariners’ Triple-A team) also going deep.\u00c2\u00a0 The Cubans fought back with a four-run sixth inning and although Canada brought themselves to within one run in the eighth, they were unable to complete their fight back and ultimately lost 7-6.\u00c2\u00a0 Japan responded to their opening day defeat to Cuba by beating Chinese Taipei 6-1.\u00c2\u00a0 The final score disguises the fact that it was a tight game most of the way through, with four runs in the top of the ninth inning inflating the winning margin right near the end.<\/p>\n Day Three preview<\/strong><\/p>\n There’s no doubt that the game of the day will be the mouth-watering clash between the United States and Cuba.\u00c2\u00a0 That one is scheduled for 4.30 am BST and promises to be a fiercely contested affair.\u00c2\u00a0 The other early game sees Chinese Taipei taking on the home nation.\u00c2\u00a0 In the two evening games in Beijing (11.00 and 12.00 BST), Canada will face Korea while the Netherlands are dealt another difficult opponent in the form of Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Day two of the Olympic baseball tournament saw the United States and Japan put their first wins on the board, while Cuba made it two wins out of two and the rain was the victor in the other game between Korea and China.\u00c2\u00a0 However, the day was blotted somewhat by a controversial decision to bring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[35],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-baseball-2","tag-olympics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4682,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/4682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}