Archive for World Baseball Classic

The World Baseball Classic is scheduled to begin early next month. This will represent the fourth such tournament, Japan having won the first two, followed by a victory by the Dominican Republic the last time around. While the United States has yet to win, they bring more talent than the rest of the countries represented.

The 16 participating countries officially named their rosters last week, accounting for a total of 226 position players and 321 pitchers from 16 countries. Not all the players will necessarily play, of course. With a view to limiting workload, teams have been permitted to name pitchers who might appear in later rounds of the tournament, even if they’re absent from the first — the idea being to protect players who haven’t benefited from spring training before the start of their respective professional league. There are four Asian countries participating in the tournament, for example — China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan — and a number of their players play at a fairly high professional level. Other teams like Australia, Israel, and Italy feature fewer MLB-type players on their rosters, naturally. Even so, there’s still a great deal of talent in the tournament — something which we can identify in the projections.

Of the 226 position players in the tournament, a Steamer projection is available for 133. Of those 133 players, 86 earn a forecast for replacement-level production or better in 2017. Nor does that account for the talent in the various Asian leagues. In other words: despite the presence of countries in which baseball is less popular, it’s still probably fair to estimate that close to half of the position players participating in the WBC will be of MLB caliber. In terms of the talent level for which we have available projections, the U.S. has a decent advantage.

The U.S. has a 50% advantage over the second-place Dominican Republic, with Venezuela and Puerto Rico placing not too far behind. The Netherlands — thanks to a combination of Xander Bogaerts, Didi Gregorius, Jonathan Schoop, and Andrelton Simmons — also figure to bring up a decent amount of MLB value. When we account for the number of players, and factor in the likelihood that starters will receive the bulk of the playing time, the gap between the Dominican Republic and the U.S. shrinks.

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Can you believe it!? Friday night, tonight!, the World Baseball Classic commences with an 11:30 p.m. ET game between Chinese Taipei and Australia!

For those of us who spent the snowy preceding months watching grainy online feeds of Australian and Latin American winter ball, this day — this meaningful day — is precious. But precious also describes the amount, the scarcity, of WBC enthusiasts in America. Tragic, but true: America and Canada do not share foreign fervor for the WBC.

Well, in an effort to correct that, I have offered studies of some Taiwanese sluggers, and today I will conclude that cultural and statistical foray. For the previous pieces, see:

INF Ngayaw Ake
1B/DH Yi-Chuan Lin

Today, let’s examine Taiwan’s likely starting left fielder, Szu-Chi Chou.
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The World Baseball Classic nears like an orange and pink dawn, a dawn that breaks once every three years — so like an Alaskan dawn. But Americans, in general, are not setting their alarm clocks. We and our brother Canadians have not taken to the tournament with the equal fervor of many foreign baseball fans.

I suspect one reason is limited knowledge of the foreign rosters. Outside of the main North American teams — the USA, Canadian, and DR rosters — we struggle to recognize more than a handful of players.

So let’s try to wrest away some passion from these non-American, non-Canadian types and learn a bit more about the other teams! Particularly, let’s examine Taiwan’s three best sluggers. Why Taiwan? Your humble author speaks a little Mandarin. Taiwan speaks a lot of Mandarin. It’s like a match!

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Let’s talk World Baseball Classic.

I believe one of the key impediments preventing American and Canadian baseball fans from true excitement about the WBC has to do with limited knowledge of foreign players. We are, as some economists might say, rationally uninformed. To learn the necessary statistics and fun bits about the teams and players would take too much time and effort, considering the difficulty language barriers present.

Lo and behold! I happen to speak and, to a lesser extent, read Chinese! Allow me to act as your conduit; your semi-skilled cultural guide for, if nothing else, the Chinese-speaking teams. Allow me to not only translate some of their more useful statistics, but also present some slices of their personalities.

Let’s examine three of Taiwan’s best hitters: (1) Ngayaw Ake, (2) Yi-Chuan Lin, and (3) Szu-Chi Chou:

Top wOBA+ Numbers*, 2009-2012

*Not park adjusted.
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