The World Baseball Classic wrapped up on Tuesday night with Japan taking the 3-2 victory over Team USA. Here’s a look at the performance from the members of the Pittsburgh Pirates who took part in the WBC, including one from last night.
David Bednar pitched a scoreless seventh inning with a 3-1 score at the time. He allowed a single, with no walks or strikeouts.
Here’s a recap of the Pittsburgh Pirates who saw action during the entire WBC tournament.
David Bednar allowed one run on three hits in four innings/four appearances, with no walks and five strikeouts.
Tsung-Che Cheng went 5-for-15, with a triple, two walks and an .879 OPS in four games for Chinese Taipei. He had three RBI singles.
Chavez Young had a strong WBC for Great Britain, going 4-for-13, with a double, three walks and five steals in five attempts. No one else had more than three steals in the tournament.
Tahnaj Thomas allowed one run on one hit and one walk, while retiring one batter in his only appearance for Great Britain.
Rob Zastryzny got a start for Canada, in which he allowed three runs over two innings on three hits, two walks, a hit batter and two strikeouts. He faced Mexico in that game.
Santiago Florez allowed one run on two hits, a walk and two strikeouts in his only inning of work. He was with Colombia.
Luis Ortiz pitched two innings in his only appearance for the Dominican Republic, as he was part of the two-game domination of Israel, when they had one total base runner in those two games. Ortiz did not allow that runner….
Roansy Contreras allowed the only runner to Israel over their near historic offensive drought. He threw 2.2 scoreless with four strikeouts and a single, before reaching his pitch count.
Duane Underwood Jr was perfect in three appearances of one inning each, not allowing a runner, while striking out two batters.
Josh Palacios went 1-for-9, with a single and a HBP, leading to a .311 OPS for The Netherlands
Antwone Kelly tossed a scoreless inning in his only appearance for The Netherlands, with no hits, walks or strikeouts.
John started working at Pirates Prospects in 2009, but his connection to the Pittsburgh Pirates started exactly 100 years earlier when Dots Miller debuted for the 1909 World Series champions. John was born in Kearny, NJ, two blocks from the house where Dots Miller grew up. From that hometown hero connection came a love of Pirates history, as well as the sport of baseball.
When he didn't make it as a lefty pitcher with an 80+ MPH fastball and a slider that needed work, John turned to covering the game, eventually focusing in on the prospects side, where his interest was pushed by the big league team being below .500 for so long. John has covered the minors in some form since the 2002 season, and leads the draft and international coverage on Pirates Prospects. He writes daily on Pittsburgh Baseball History, when he's not covering the entire system daily throughout the entire year on Pirates Prospects.
So many great moments, but my favorite was Randy Arozarena robbing the Japan hitter and posing seemingly forever.
That dude has a flair for the dramatic in BIG games.
Then signing autographs before the next batter lol
I love me a showman!
I QT’d someone on Twitter and said I envy how much joy and fun other countries and cultures have during sporting events. It’s a party for them.
I enjoyed watching that whole tournament. The early rounds were difficult to keep up with, but overall, that was a lot of exciting baseball.
The early round games are definitely bad, but I guess they need them to make it financially worthwhile and get more countries involved. It’s a tournament where six of the 20 teams had a chance of winning and the other 14 collectively had about 1% chance, so it’s not the best setup, but maybe that changes in the distant future.
Japan is just going to keep getting better because the sport is beyond popular there. It’s equivalent to how baseball was in the early years of the sport here from 1880s into the 1930s, where every big city in the US had leagues and every small town had teams. I think Japan is still in the 1880s stages where it still going to get bigger. It’s like the Dominican, just with 11x the population. The league in Japan used to turn marginal US talent into stars, but now the US players in Japan aren’t dominating anything.
The earlier rounds are definitely more for the prospect lovers, who will tune into a game just to catch Cheng
That was my only gripe, the pool that Japan played in was a cakewalk. Meanwhile Pool D had the DR, Venezuela, PR….but I get it, your not gonna send MLB players across the Ocean other than the players from those countries.
As Big Papi said in the postgame, it was eye-opening how much Japanese pitching has developed–whereas their pitching used to rely on location and offspeed stuff, now they still have that plus velocities in the upper 90’s. I guess that’s happening in Korea too, or at least with Shim.
As for the early round games, there were duds which kept me from watching. But then you had the Taiwan group where every team went 2-2 or the “group of death” where PR and Venezuela managed to knock out the DR. Even the U.S. was briefly on the brink after Colombia upset Mexico and Mexico beat us–had Colombia beaten Canada and Great Britain, two winnable games, our team of all stars wouldn’t have made it out of the group stage. That seems a lot different than in past years.
Asian influence is gonna single-handedly bring the splitter back.
Absolutely devastating pitch that american coaching dogma had all but wiped out of existence.
I wanna say the Pirates for a moment were grabbing quite a few splitter guys. Unfortunately they were mostly all still terrible.
Pretty recently, right?
Yeah, cause I wanna say it included Bednar, Shreve, and some others. Ricky DeVito, now traded, probably included.
I’m pretty sure when you put US Stars, dominating, and Trevor Bauer together, there’s a good joke to be found. I’m going to choose not to go in the gutter to find it though.
It helps when you have a few epic comebacks! It shows how important relievers are and cement my worry about this team even getting to the 70 win mark!
Contreras closer by the end of the year!
You misspelled Ortiz.
Ortiz has a better fastball, comparable slider, change that is a work in progress which seems further than Contreras’ change, and the stamina to pitch a full season, not sure if Contreras is more than a two pitch guy and based on last year velocity drop, if he has the stamina. As always, hope I’m wrong!
Roansy is certainly more than a 2-pitch guy. He can flip a curve in there and has a show me change.
They both need a pitch against lefties, cutter is the “it” pitch right now, hopefully they could effectively learn it, because a change up seems like a pitch that you either have it or you don’t!
I believe Keller is working on that this spring.
He used it a lot last time out, is a good pitch for him.
Eh…he was at or above 90% FB-SL by the end of the year.
Damn-near everybody is more than a 2-pitch guy by those standards.
Ah, I didn’t realize it was that bad at the end of the year.
That was friggin AWESOME.
It was comparable to the World Cup from a fan excitement level. Only gripe is USA SP roster. Otherwise, Chef’s kiss!
It was an epic tournament and seemed to offer real potential for expanding baseball’s global appeal. Much appreciation to Trout, Betts, Turner, Ohtani, Soto, Lindor, Machado, Bednar, Diaz and so many others who not only agreed to play but then played with such intensity and emotion. And the fans who turned out gave it an almost World Cup feel.