Loving The WBC

I watched a decent amount of the World Baseball Classic over the weekend, and I gotta say I'm into it. Last night, I was keeping an eye on the Dominican Republic-Netherlands game, figuring, like most, that the DR would bounce back from its defeat a couple days earlier. When I noticed the game was scoreless in extra innings, I thought "I should probably start watching this." I wasn't disappointed. The DR scored a run in the top of the eleventh, and with the nasty Carlos Marmol coming in to close, I thought it was over. But remarkably, the Dutch rallied for two runs, helped by a couple of errors. Some have described the WBC as having a "playoff atmosphere." I would argue that it's more like March Madness, with the potential for crazy upsets and unsung heroes, and the enthusiasm shown by the various nations' fans.

If there's one problem I still have with the WBC, it's the distance that pitchers are allowed to go. Most starters don't make it through the fourth inning, and the game is determined by a revolving door of relievers. This is often by necessity, as many pitchers have seemed to tire out and become ineffective by the third or fourth. Joe Sheehan has a good idea over at Baseball Prospectus for fixing this, or at least making it less of a problem. He recommends cutting the field to 12 teams, and pushing the tournament back to the end of March, just before the beginning of the regular season. This way starters will have built up a little more stamina over the course of Spring Training. The more closely the WBC resembles actual baseball, the more popular I believe it will be.