[FuzzyRussianHat]

The third Baseball Grand Championship would be hosted in Athens, Greece. The auto-bid teams would be MLB’s Philadelphia and Phoenix, CABA’s Juarez and Santo Domingo, EAB’s Goyang and Hiroshima, BSA’s Callao and Concepcion, EBF’s Vienna and Cologne, EPB’s Yekaterinburg, OBA’s Guadalcanal, APB’s Semarang, CLB’s Shanghai, WAB’s Lome, SAB’s Yangon, ABF’s Baku, ALB’s Abu Dhabi, and AAB’s Addis Ababa. The 20^th “wild card” slot went to Oceania Championship runner-up Melbourne.

This was the second season of the BGC being a true round-robin format with each team playing once. No tiebreaker games were to be used as officials figured the head-to-head tiebreaker would generally be enough. They probably didn’t have the 2012 event in mind when contemplating possible finishes.



Five teams finished tied with the best record at 12-7; Concepcion, Goyang, Guadalcanal, Philadelphia, and Phoenix. Adding to the competitive soup, four teams were only one back at 11-8 (Addis Ababa, Cologne, Melbourne, and Vienna) and Yangon was two back at 10-9. This event really showed how much the gap had narrowed between the talent levels of each world league.

The next step was figuring out who actually won the thing. Fortunately, Goyang made that easy by going 4-0 against the other 12-7 teams. Thus, the Green Sox earned Grand Champion honors, becoming the first team outside of MLB to win it. The South Korean squad managed to beat the other top squads despite finishing with a negative run differential overall at -3.



After sorting out the other tiebreakers, officially it was Guadalcanal second, Phoenix third, Philadelphia fourth, and Concepcion fifth. The Green Jackets made it back-to-back years with a Pacific League team in second, as Tahiti did that in 2011. Guadalcanal and Philadelphia had the most runs, both scoring 109. The Phillies had been the most dominant with a +60 run differential. Their 2.28 team ERA stands as the best mark in any BGC as of 2037.

Officially, the next spots saw Melbourne sixth, Addis Ababa seventh, Cologne eighth, and Vienna ninth. Yangon rounded out the top ten at 10-9. Hiroshima, Juarez, and Lome were each at 9-10. Baku and Callao finished 8-11, then at 7-12 were Abu Dhabi, Semarang, and Yekaterinburg. The last place spot was split between Santo Domingo and Shanghai.

Tournament MVP went to Hiroshima LF Hitoshi Kubota, the reigning Japan League MVP and four-time JL MVP. In 19 starts, Kubota had 28 hits, 19 runs, 10 home runs, 14 RBI, a .400/.456/.871 slash, 262 wRC+, and 1.8 WAR.

Melbourne’s William Brechin was named Best Pitcher. The 28-year old Australian lefty had joined the Mets in 2012 after a relatively unremarkable run with Brisbane. In six BGC starts, he tossed 43.1 innings with a 1.04 ERA, 4-1 record, 45 strikeouts, 10 walks, 22 hits, and 2.0 WAR.

Other notes: The first-ever BGC Perfect Game came on November 10 with Santo Domingo’s Omer Zkan striking out 16 against Callao. It was a stunning highlight for the Turkish journeyman, who otherwise had an unremarkable career. Zkan pitched for nine teams between CABA, MLB, ABF, and EBF.