The Netherlands break their duck

The Netherlands finally got their first runs and their first win on day four of the Olympic Baseball tournament.  Europe’s representatives got the better of the home nation, while there were also wins for Cuba, the U.S. and Korea. 

It had been a tough start for the Netherlands, losing to Chinese Taipei in their opening game and then being swept aside by the U.S. and Japan.  An 0-3 record is a difficult hole to dig your way out of in the preliminary stage of this tournament and losing to China would have effectively killed any chance of making the semi-finals.  Under this sudden death pressure, the Dutch rose to the occasion and gained a 6-4 win.  Their first run of the tournament came in the top of the fourth inning to level the score at 1-1 and then they followed it up by plating five runs in the fifth, with back-to-back jacks by Sidney de Jong and Brian Engelhardt.  China made it interesting by reducing the deficit to three runs in the eighth and then to just two with two outs of the regulation nine innings still to go.  The Dutch held their nerve though and held on to their long-awaited first victory. 

Aside from the Netherlands’ debut win, day four was billed as the ‘day of derbies’, with the U.S. facing Canada and Japan taking on Korea.

The U.S. recovered from 4-0 deficit to beat their Canadian rivals 5-4.  The Cardinals’ Triple-A infielder Brian Barden was the hero for the Americans.  Having replaced the injured Jayson Nix at second base, after the latter was injured against Cuba yesterday, Barden made the most of his opportunity by going 2 for 5 with a double and a solo home run which started the comeback (a word that seems to be cropping up a lot in this tournament).  The A’s prospect Brett Anderson gave up four runs (one unearned) over 5.2 innings before Brian Duensing (a pitcher on the Minnesota Twins’ Triple-A team) pitched 3.1 scoreless innings to build the platform for the U.S. victory.

The victory levels the U.S’s record to 2-2, while the Canadians slip to 1-3 despite playing some good baseball in all four of their games.

Korea improved their record to 3-0 with a 5-3 victory over Japan.  With the game tied at 2-2 heading into the ninth inning, Korea jumped on pitcher Hitoki Iwase to score three runs in the top of the inning.  Japan could only muster one in return in the bottom of the inning, so they took their second loss of the tournament to fall to an even 2-2 record.

Cuba were the pre-tournament favourites and they have lived up to their billing so far.  They beat Chinese Taipei to make it four wins from four games, but it was far from easy.  After suffering a harrowing twelfth inning defeat to China yesterday, Chinese Taipei put in a sterling effort to push the Cubans all the way.  Pitchers Chen-Chang Lee and Chic-Chia Chang (who wins first prize in the ‘name that sounds most like a till register’ competition) limited Cuba to just one run on five hits.  Unfortunately for Chinese Taipei, the Cuban pitchers were even better as Elier Sanchez and Norberto Gonzalez combined for a four hit shutout to bring their team home to a 1-0 victory.

Day five preview

We have almost reached the halfway point of the preliminary stage.  Sunday 17th was scheduled to be the rest day after all eight teams had each played four games, but the suspended game from Thursday between Korea and China is still to be completed.  They will meet tomorrow although there are mixed messages about whether the game will start from scratch or whether they will pick up where they left off, with the scores tied at 0-0 after five innings.