World Baseball Classic Expanding?
Posted: Tue Mar 24, 2009 5:58 pm
Personally I think it's way too soon but what do you think about the World Baseball Classic expanding? I know they want to grow the game to be a world wide sport, but I think at this point the competition is just too weak to warrant adding 8 new countries all at once.
Could they even find 8 countries willing to lose two or three games and then go home?
http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/new ... =wbc&team=
What option would make the WBC a better event to watch?
Which countries do you think will be willing to play?
Could they even find 8 countries willing to lose two or three games and then go home?
Selig said, at the same time, that the Classic steering committee would continue to make tweaks in the length and format. Paul Archey, Major League Baseball's executive vice president of international business operations, said planning for the '13 Classic and a probable expansion to 24 teams with play-in rounds will begin almost immediately after the current tournament ends.
The double-elimination brackets used in the first two rounds determined decisive winners, but they led to almost meaningless final games that decided seeding for the next rounds.
Also, Japan could face Korea for the fifth time in this tournament if it ascends to the final game. But in the second round, Japan played four times and never faced Mexico. The Japanese defeated Cuba twice and split with Korea.
In the '06 round-robin format, a complicated and confusing set of international tiebreakers was used to determine which team would move on. The downside was that three teams in one second-round bracket -- the U.S., Mexico and Japan -- all finished with 1-2 records. Japan moved on to the semifinals because of the tiebreakers.
http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/new ... =wbc&team=
What option would make the WBC a better event to watch?
Which countries do you think will be willing to play?