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Friday, March 14, 2008

4-3 Loss to South Korea....

Taiwan lost its final game to South Korea and finished the tourney with a 5-2 record, placing third behind Canada and South Korea. Amateur SP Chen-Chang Lee (hyped by Keith Law as the top Taiwanese collegiate pitcher last year) allowed 4 runs (although only 2 were earned) over the first 2.1 innings. It didn't help that his defense behind him committed 2 errors that led to two costly unearned runs. Chih-Chia Chang would relieve Lee and hold South Korea scoreless over the last 6.2 innings. Chang's reemergence as a reliable starter has to be encouraging to Taiwanese baseball fans.

Boxscore
Game Recap 1
Game Recap 2
NT Final Stats

A lot of the team's success has to be attributed to Coach Hong. He did a lot more with less - meaning that this team relied on some young inexperienced talent and did not have a lot of the name players that were in last year's World Cup debacle. The NT's OF seems set for the next few years with youngsters Che-Hsuan Lin and Kuo-Hui Lo manning 2 of the 3 spots. Lin's ability to make tough plays in the OF look routine is breathtaking. Lo did his best CFC impression in this tourney.

Other winners on the day in tightly contested games included Canada, Australia, and Mexico
Congrats to South Korea, Canada, and Taiwan on making it to Beijing! They will now join host nation China, the US, Cuba, Japan, and the Netherlands in the 8 team field.

The CTBA received praise from the IBAF for its efforts in organizing the tourney.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The tourney went well for everyone for the Aussies, who came away really pissed about Korea's handling of some contracted players and Taiwan's scheduling, not to mention the timing of the whole thing. I think their beef was somewhat justified, but the teams that placed ahead of them also had plenty of high profile players that couldn't play. Sore losers?