4584

to the Forum

makoG

I was very happy to find this forum. Maybe you has right about the Netherlands Antilles team. The European group is my wishlist than a real chance, probably I will visit this event, and Canada is one of my favourite team. I think, South Africa has bigger chance to be there.

MODERNERABASEBALL.COM: Home of Joe Connor's ballpark guides guesses the following teams: Nicaragua, Colombia, Israel, Brazil, Germany, Russia, Britain, France, El Salvador, Honduras and the Czech Republic. Will see!

Until the first pitch of the qualifiers check this again:
World Baseball Classic: MediaPlayer

Nebo86

Glad to have you here makoG. I am looking forward to the WBCQ rounds next year. I find the most intriguing possibilities to be:

Brazil - They have several players in the U.S Minor leagues, Japanese Industrial Leagues and many other players with International experience. Their coaches have been trained by Cubans and MLB recently hosted a training camp for Brazil's Elite youngsters.

New Zealand - There has been some buzz about the Kiwis inclusion the upcoming qualifiers. A lot of their young players have been getting some attention from the U.S. Don't forget New Zealand is also a cricketing nation; which means they have the basic fielding, hand-eye coordination and throwing skills necessary to play baseball.

Germany - These guys are rapidly progressing and becoming a threat to the Dutch/Italian dominance of European baseball. They have a few players in the U.S. Minors that will probably be called to represent Deutschland.

Colombia/Nicaragua - After being snubbed in the first two editions of the WBC; how will they be supported by their fans? Both nations don't have many Major Leaguers (about five players between them), so most of their teams will be made up of minor leaguers and domestic winter leaguers.

4584

I'm glad you have this topic covered so well. It is good to have it for posters in the Forum

Nebo86

Based on a rumor that New Zealand has a good chance of getting an invite to the upcoming WBC Qualifier in Asia; here is my updated guess of what the WBC Qualifiers will look like:

Asia Group host: Taiwan
North Atlantic Group host: Canada
Latin America Group host: Panama
Europe Group host: Germany
I replaced Indonesia with France and rearranged all of the groups from my previous guess. Indonesia and Thailand missed my cut by a small margin. If the Latin America group comes to fruition it would be considered the group of death of the WBCQ; no pushovers in that group. Any thoughts?

Nebo86

Apparently, my previous prediction was soo good it was posted elsewhere (by someone else with a few alterations)
Check out post #84 of: Baseball Philippines - Page 5 - PinoyExchange

makoG

Some interesting statistics in the 2011 IBAF Numbers Book:
IBAF

makoG

South Africa hosts the European group? I hope not.

Nebo86

I don't think it will happen, because it's cheaper to fly one South African team to Europe than to fly three European teams to South Africa. My pick is Germany, because they hosted a round in the 2009 Baseball World Cup and had the best attendance per game in the tournament. Also they have expressed interest in hosting a round of the upcoming WBC Qualifiers. Then again who knows what the Steering Committee will do at this point.

Nebo86

I'm updating part of my guess:

Asia Group host: Taiwan
I replaced Pakistan with Indonesia, in light of recent world events. Here a few other reasons Indonesia has a chance to get an invitation to the 2012 WBC Qualifiers:

1)Indonesia won the last Asia Baseball Cup where they participated in 2009.

2) Indonesia hosted the 2010 Little League Asia-Pacific Regional in all age categories for baseball and softball:

• Little League
• Junior League
• Senior League
• Big League

3) Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous nation and is IBAF ranked 31st in the World.

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