Baseball World Cup 2013 and beyond
 

Well maybe beyond anyway.

My fourth attempt in the DR forum with one pretty successful and two aborted ones.
Anyway, as the title suggests, in my fictional universe I'm going to run a quadrennial World Cup based on the real world one and on the World Baseball Classic timeline.
My fictional universe presumes that baseball has overtook cricket in most of those countries where the latter is played. So you'll see some different countries involved. And maybe some other surprise ones in future renewals.
If I get through this one then I'll be running a similar quadrennial World Cup for women - which has fewer nations involved - at the midpoint between the male versions.

So I'm not trying to model real life at all, although the recognised baseball powers should still be at the top at least in the first few versions.

I'm not sure how to preview it so I think I'm just going to post up the ratings for you to look at and decide upon. I'll also look through the league-wide data to give predictions.

Thanks to you if you're reading this, and hopefully I'll keep it going.
Paul.

The 2013 Baseball World Cup will be held over three stages.
The first round sees the 24 nations involved playing in four groups based around the world, each composed of six teams. Each nation's roster consists of 28 players - 16 position players and 12 pitchers.

They will play each other once in a round robin with the top two teams in each pool qualifying for the second round.

The groups were drawn with eight teams being seeded based on league level - Canada, Cuba, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Puerto Rico, United States, and Venezuela.

Pool A sees Canada and Puerto Rico as the seeded teams drawn alongside Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Panama, and Philippines. The home team will be Canada with games played in Montréal and Toronto.

Pool B's seeded teams were Cuba and Japan with the rest being made up of Commonwealth nations - Australia, India, New Zealand, and Pakistan. These games will be played in Cuba in Havana and Santiago de Cuba.

Pool C saw both Korea and the United States drawn to face Chinese Taipei, Costa Rica, Italy, and the Netherlands. Korea is the host with games to be held in Busan, Incheon, and Seoul.

Finally, Pool D has the remaining seeded teams, Mexico and Venezuela, in the pool with China, Dominican Republic, South Africa, and Spain. Mexico will host with games held in the new stadium in Guadalajara along with Mexico City and Monterrey.

At the end of the five games the top two in each pool will advance to the finals tournament in Japan. Here the winners and runners-up in each group will be split up with one pool based in Sapporo and the other based in Nishinomiya near Osaka. Here the games will be played in the double elimination format with the winners advancing to a best-of-three series in Tokyo. The two losers will play a similar best-of-three series for the bronze medal.

Let's begin the image dump with Pool A. Bangladesh are one of the newer nations at the game and are likely to be the cellar dwellers. They are improving and have eight players in their roster at the AAA league level. That includes the whole of a possible outfield in Idhma Nandkeolyar, Carudarsana Chandrasekhar, and Candracarya Dasari and relief pitcher Abhijnana Rana who threw 58.2 innings last year for Nagasaki in Japan although with a 4.60 ERA.

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Canada come into the tournament as one of the favourites and have major league talent all over their roster.
Outfielder Daniel Moreau combines speed on the basepath with plenty of contact on a big bat that saw him hit 25 home runs and bat .306 with Oakland.
But in Patrick McMillan, the Canadians may have the best pitcher in the tournament. In his rookie season in Toronto the 25-year-old won both the Rookie of the Year and the Cy Young as he went 19-3 with a 3.14 ERA.

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Nicaragua were dealt a blow before the tournament when 20-year-old prospect Jose Mora ruptured a tendon in his bicep. A 13 game winner in Korea last year weakens a starting group that includes two major league pitchers in Lucio Ramirez and Armando Hernandez who went 27-21 combined. A lot of their roster plays in the lower AA level leagues around the world and they look to be one of those that will be soonest eliminated.
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For Panama, they have some big league hitting in Gilberto Sandobel (.324 AVG, 6 HR) and Jose Delgado (.263 AVG, 13 HR), but their main major league names are on the pitching end with starter Santiago Hernandez who went 10-7 with a 3.96 ERA a year ago, and reliever Luis Manuel who put up a 2.17 ERA in 49.2 innings. They also have Alejandro Toledo in the bullpen who saved 28 games and had a 1.98 ERA closing for Saitama. If the pitching stays solid they're the likeliest challengers to the seeded nations.
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The Philippines are probably the fifth best Asian nation and although have a long baseball history have been in the shade of more powerful Japan, Korea, and even Taiwan.
Whilst they have a few boppers, they're not a team that will bat for any average, and although they have a player for the future in Joshua Tumanut, the infielder nicknamed "Crayon" will need a lot of pencils to fill in the blank spaces this team has.
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If ratings on paper were any guide, Puerto Rico along with Canada would have easy passage to the finals tournament.
They have the #1 rated catcher in Jorge Leyva who hit 32 home runs with Tampa Bay and have plenty of bats up the right field line in first baseman Jesus Martinez and right fielder Julio Sandoval. But the batting doesn't stop there and the team will score a lot of runs.
Their pitching ranks in the middle of the pack and does rely heavily on Liga de las Americas players and could prove the team's undoing.
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