The winless South African squad gave the NT a run for its money as the S.A. pitching staff limited the NT's offense to only 5 hits. Thankfully for the NT, a few of those knocks were extra-base hits as Chih-Hsien Chiang hit his first HR of the tourney, and Kuo-Hui Lo tripled in another run. SP Chien-Ming Chiang threw 6 scoreless innings, allowing only 3 hits to go along with 6 K's and 2 BB's.
Boxscore
With the win, the NT has officially secured a berth alongside South Korea and Canada. Canada beat SK today, giving SK its first blemish on a previously undefeated record. Other winners on the day included Australia and Mexico.
Chih-Chia Chang is a possible starter for tomorrow's final game against South Korea. The game has no implications on qualifying for the Olympics, but national pride is at stake here.
Conspiracy Theory? - Jon Deeble, the HC of the Australian squad, insists that there was a conspiracy by the "Asian" countries to ensure that Australia did not qualify.
Other:
Yung-Chi Chen was assigned by the Mariners to the AAA Tacoma Rainiers team.
7 comments:
Deeble: "...we're sending 17-year-olds out against former Major League players. It's a big ask."
So what's Mr. Deeble's excuse for getting a big goose egg against Taiwan? The only former MLB player we had didn't even play. They got shutout by our home grown pitching staffs!
Deeble: "The Koreans went out of their way to make sure we never got our two best players... They wouldn't allow them to play for us because they didn't want us to beat them. Their (Korean) clubs wouldn't release them... We've got guys in Japan we couldn't get released..."
If this piece of work really wants to show some balls and speak his mind, then he needs to be more specific and accuse the Japaneses and Koreans for having their pro leagues "locking" his talents instead of targeting an all inclusive "Asians". Beside, last time I checked MLB (according to the article, occupied 14 of their 30 some "unavailable" talents) is not an "Asian" league, perhaps he also need to point out that MLB also has a hand in "staging" this tournament...but wait, then he'd lose his job.... hmmmmmm.
Somehow I got a feeling that Deeble would be singing a different tone if the Australians finished in the top 3, but that's just me.
does anyone know if the US minor leaguers get to play in the olympics?
That Australian conspiracy theory is the biggest BS I have ever heard. Australia gets beaten badly by Taiwan and Korea and now Deeble is trying to make up excuses as to why they lost so badly. Seriously, Taiwan didnt send any Major League players to the tourney and our best homegrown pitcher Pan Wei-Lun wasnt even playing. Neither was Chen Chin-Feng. Chen Yung-Chi and Hu Chin-Lung didnt go either. Face it, you lost because the team that played better won - not because of some crazy conspiracy to stop Australia from getting into the olympics. Quit whining and show some sportsmanship and humility.
On a happier note - We qualified for Beijing. Lets hope we can play well.
How did Chen Yung-Chi perform in MLB camp? I see that he was the only Seattle Minor Leaguer to hit a homer right? Its good that he will be getting playing time in AAA. Hopefully soon he will get the call up. Do you think he can get called up to the bigs this year terror?
Taiwan lost to Korea in a close 4-3 game. Hits were pretty even with korea getting 9 and taiwan getting 7. Not a bad outing at all considering all our injured players. Neither Yang Chien Fu or Chien Ming Chiang were pitching today too.
Taiwan barely got in the Olympics, the game against Mexico proved to be the difference.
Mr. Deeble probably had a point, but the timing of his tirade was poor - he went off after his team lost a do-or-die game to Taiwan.
Not too sure at this stage if the US minor leaguers will be available - I would imagine so - and probably more likely for the positional players vs. pitchers.
YC Chen should get a call up in September; if he gets called up before then it'll probably be because of an injury to the guys ahead of him on the depth chart.
Yeah right like they would do sooo much better facing Chien-Ming Wang and Erik Bedard / Justin Morneau instead ;) (though they might outdo Korea I suppose... since what's left of the Korean major leaguers are either on the downside of their career or havn't really established or hurt)
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