All Hail Our New Japanese Overlords

In the WBC tonight, Japan 9, USA 4, and your WBC Final will be Japan versus the South Koreans.

Now, you might want to credit Daisuka Matsuzaka for the win, and give props to the electric relief work of Yu Darvish; the latter, especially, is hardcore. But that's really not in the tone of the blog, so here's your Top 6 Goats...

6) Derek Jeter. A crucial error that led to the Japanese explosion in the sixth inning, which made a manageable 4-6 deficit into the 4-9 final. How much longer is the statute of limitations on Jeet being clutch, anyway?

5) Adam Dunn. His career as a National can start now with the proper feel, as his deer in the headlights strikeout in the ninth gave this the perfect Terence Long-ish moment. He also took the Oh Fer Sucking Out Loud tonight with three K's, and there's a reason why beer league guys that sabermetric freaks drool over aren't, you know, actually present on teams that win championships. The faster this guy gets to an AL team and a DH role, the better.

4) David Wright. Also had an error to go with his perfect A-Rodish CYA RBI double and .281 average. No one will point the finger at him, but for a guy that's clearly the best third baseman in MLB as people draft today, they needed a lot more than this.

3) Roy Oswalt. Betrayed by his defense, but you're going to get that with 7 baserunners in 3.2 innings, and four of the six runs were earned. His 9.82 WBC ERA was indicative of the biggest reason why the Americans aren't going to win this year, and probably won't in the future, either: starting pitching. When Akinoria Iwamura is beating you senseless, it's not good.

2) Jake Peavy. A 14-run ERA that was so bad, manager Davey Johnson skipped him for Oswalt. Any post mortem of the US effort in the WBC will begin and end with the Mercy Rule Meltdown against Puerto Rico, and that was all on Peavy.

1) Davey Johnson. Has been just dying to pull the trigger and forfeit due to various injuries. His decision to go for Oswalt over Peavy didn't work out tonight, and why anyone on this earth would have Jeter at shortstop and Jimmy Rollins at designated hitter, in a game that you are supposed to want to win...

Well, dumb managers get what they deserve. And it's not like anyone is giving Johnson a job at managing in MLB now. For every really good reason.

Hugo's Not Gonna Like That

Re-enacting the same kind of vibe as when the least Dutch looking group of athletes ever knocked off the Dominicans, it's the South Koreans taking down my pick to win, the Venezuelans. The Koreans go to the finals, and will either face the Japanese or Americans.

You'd like to wax rhapsodic about the scrappy Koreans, but really, Hugo Chavez's team lost this one when Johan Santana claimed an ouchie and went home. Carlos Silva is one of those guys that "pitches to contact", and that's right up there with "knowing the system" and "being a game manager" in the list of compliments that you want to avoid as an athlete. Someone with the name of Yoon Suk-Min gave the Koreans a quality start, Bobby Abreu continued his long slow slide into obsolescence based on awful defensive play, and over 40 thousand people paid to see this in Los Angeles. All was right in Commissioner Bud's world.

Are the Koreans really ready to be our new baseball overlords? No, of course, not, because that means the WBC actually has some consequences or isn't a complete joke. But who knows, maybe this will mean Silva a spot in a Caracas jail on some trumped up charge from the Hugonots. That's something that Seattle Fan could also really get behind...

Blogrolling Is Keeping It In The Family

Does it matter how you dress your kids? Yes. The Figthin' have Brett Myers and son, a sweet little tyke that's probably not being brought up to live in urban areas.

Are you shocked to learn that Kevin Youkilis thinks Red Sox Fan is better than American Fan? No, I'm not either. But to say it in public is special. Larry Brown Sports with the love.

Sparty and Friends is helping a laid-off blogger pay the bills. Or just feel bitter that he's watching the tournament, and you're, well, maybe not.

MLJ wants to know what the point of the WBC is, considering that Davey Johnson seems to be constantly talking about forfeiting. Personally, I think that we should all be giving Johnson his props for pioneering new ways to lose.

An excellent point to be made here people -- don't hate Duke because they enjoy same-sex relations. There are much better reasons!

A Small Note to the Lemur's Coverage of the World Baseball Classic

Yes, it's amusing, shocking, amazing or all of the above when Team USA loses on the mercy rule to Puerto Rico. (And yes, kids, this officially puts me deep in the black of finding things to fill the bloghole with today.)

No, it doesn't mean that there is something wrong with us as a country that we're not giving this august experience the prestige and importance that it deserves. And the same goes for the Olympics, or the Little League World Series, or any other short-series experience that you can name.

What it means, really, is that Baseball Is A Funny Game, prone to all kinds of low sample size weirdness. If the worst team in baseball somehow found itself into the World Series against the best team, it would win a third of the time.

And that's just factual, really; it happens every year in MLB with top teams struggling against crud teams. Greatness is determined over time and at bats and innings and lots of them, and while jumping to conclusions is fun, it also leaves you looking real silly real fast. Consider the case of the mighty Cubans, who were being written up as clearly the best team in the WBC before today, when they went down meekly, 6-0, to the Japanese. I caught their act today, and it looked like they didn't have a single player who was at all interested in working a pitch count. (It also doesn't mean that Japan, with their 0.79 team ERA, is a clear next best pick; that's a lineup that's utterly devoid of power.)

Are the Americans prone to treating the WBC as Spring Training in different uniforms? Of course; they should. Will there ever be a truly meaningful international event in baseball, a la the soccer World Cup? Well, maybe, but if so, it won't be an annual event that happens in March; it'll be a lot more involved than that, because it will have a heckuva lot more countries involved.

And if you need to rail against a country and their culture for what happens in a short series sports event... well, that just says more about the writer than it does the event. It's not such a good thing, either.