We already knew which four teams would be heading into the semi-finals, but the\u00c2\u00a0final day of the Olympics Baseball tournament preliminary\u00c2\u00a0round provided plenty of action.\u00c2\u00a0 There were two games decided by the new ‘extra innings’ rule, including a pitching classic between Japan and the U.S., while the top two teams Cuba and Korea\u00c2\u00a0showed their dominance over the rest of the field with convincing victories.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cuba responded to losing their unbeaten record yesterday by pummelling China 17-1<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 They jumped all over the home nation in the second inning, putting together two home runs, two triples, one double, four singles and a walk, while China added in a fielding error for good measure.\u00c2\u00a0 All told, Cuba amassed nine hits and nine runs during the inning and they kept going over the next four, eventually racking up twenty hits in total.\u00c2\u00a0 China did at least end their tournament on a slightly positive note by breaking up the shutout with a single run in the top of the seventh; however, they needed another seven runs to avoid the ‘mercy killing’ and one run was all they could manage.<\/p>\n It was almost as comfortable for Korea.\u00c2\u00a0 A Daeho Lee two-run homer in the first inning set them on their way to a 10-0<\/a> victory over the Netherlands in eight innings.\u00c2\u00a0 The Dutch were shutout once again, compiling just four hits and failing to get a single runner in scoring position throughout the game.\u00c2\u00a0 Wonsam Jang pitched all eight innings for Korea, giving the rest of their pitching staff an extra day of rest in the build up to the final two days of the competition.<\/p>\n Cuba and Korea’s victories may have been straightforward, but the same can’t be said for Chinese Taipei and the United States.\u00c2\u00a0 The former defeated Canada in a twelve inning 6-5<\/a> win.\u00c2\u00a0 Chinese Taipei let a 5-2 lead slip and the game was tied at 5-5 at the end of nine frames, but they took advantage of the ‘extra innings’ rule in the top of the twelfth.\u00c2\u00a0 Chih-Hsien Chiang singled home a run to begin the inning and although they were unable to add any more, one run proved to be enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Fu-Te Ni struck out the first two Canadian batters in the bottom of the inning before Chih-Chia Chang came in and struck out Chris Robinson to end the game.<\/p>\n The final game saw Japan and the U.S. meet in what could potentially be a preview of the final.\u00c2\u00a0 If so, it will be a fantastic contest.\u00c2\u00a0 The two pitching staffs dominated the batting lineups.\u00c2\u00a0 Every time Japan left the field after holding America scoreless in the top of the inning, the U.S. turned around and did the same to them.\u00c2\u00a0 The run of zeroes on the scoreboard could only be broken by the ‘extra innings’ rule (a strong argument in favour of the rule for TV execs and tournament organizers; a strong argument against it for baseball purists).\u00c2\u00a0 The U.S. had the first chance to break the deadlock and they did so by plating four runs on three hits.\u00c2\u00a0 Casey Weathers (a first round draft pick by the Rockies last year) struck out the first two Japanese batters in the bottom of the inning and it looked like the U.S would ease their way to the win.\u00c2\u00a0 Japan had other ideas though.\u00c2\u00a0 They scored two runs and then had the bases loaded, only for Weathers to get Shinnosuke Abe to hit a pop-up to first baseman Terry Tiffee to kill the rally and end the game with a final score of 4-2<\/a> to the Americans.<\/p>\n At the end of the preliminary round, the standings look like this:<\/p>\n 1) Korea (7-0) Thursday as in off-day.\u00c2\u00a0 In the semi-finals on Friday, it’s Korea\u00c2\u00a0versus Japan and Cuba\u00c2\u00a0versus the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We already knew which four teams would be heading into the semi-finals, but the\u00c2\u00a0final day of the Olympics Baseball tournament preliminary\u00c2\u00a0round provided plenty of action.\u00c2\u00a0 There were two games decided by the new ‘extra innings’ rule, including a pitching classic between Japan and the U.S., while the top two teams Cuba and Korea\u00c2\u00a0showed their dominance […]<\/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-560","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\/560","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=560"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4691,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/560\/revisions\/4691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n2) Cuba (6-1)
\n3) United States (5-2)
\n4) Japan (4-3)
\n———————–
\n5) Chinese Taipei (2-5)
\n6) Canada (2-5)
\n7) Netherlands (1-6)
\n8 ) China (1-6)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n