Milwaukee Brewers in the WBC Roundup: Decker scores in Israel win

After losing 2-1 to Israel in yesterday’s opening match, the hosts of Pool A were beaten once again at the Gocheok Sky Dome after the Dutch team claimed a 5-0 win.

It’s not impossible that sometime late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning – Thursday afternoon in Korea – there could be a big showdown in the Israel-Netherlands game between Jason Marquis and Wlademir Balentien. Submarine pitchers, also known as underhand pitchers, are very rare in European and American leagues. Lefty Jeremy Bleich relieved Thornton, but after a strikeout of Yongkyu Lee, Seo singled to left and Hur scored to tie it up at one each.

The first name might not yet be familiar to A’s fans, though the second likely is. But Korea couldn’t take further advantage of the rally. So the score was a much tighter 7-4… for less than a half-inning.

Cuba grabbed four runs in that sequence and added one run each in the sixth and seventh innings.

Israel’s first two games were televised in the U.S.by MLB Network. The upshot there is that, while Israel may lack for star power, its base level of competence is very high, as its roster is nearly entirely comprised of players who have played both college and minor league baseball. With two losses, the best South Korea can hope for is to beat Chinese Taipei and get into a tiebreaker game Friday.

In their next at-bat, Taiwan went in front with two runs on a wild pitch by Jair Jurrjens and a sacrifice fly by Lin Chih-sheng.

That was part of a 5-run 7th inning that put the game out of reach.

That’s when pitcher Chen-Hua Lin came in with one out and the bases loaded and promptly scored all of those runners thanks to a hilarious throwing error to first base, which no one was covering. That would have been a good play had anyone on Chinese Taipei bothered to actually cover first base.

Profar is 3-for-8 with three RBIs in the tournament. Included in the onslaught were home runs from catcher Ryan Lavarnway and first baseman Nate Freiman, who both have minor league baseball experience in the United States. Indeed, none of the 16 teams in this year’s Classic has fewer native countrymen than Israel.

Corey Baker tossed 4 2/3 scoreless innings in Team Israel’s victory over Chinese Taipei at the World Baseball Classic.

Tuesday morning, Korea takes on the Netherlands at 3:30 a.m. – Anytime you watch a game played in a foreign country overseas, you will notice one thing: the crowd is constantly in the game and always making some sort of noise.

The Pool A winners will face the two leading teams from Pool B (Japan, Cuba, Australia and China) in Tokyo starting March 12.