Cuba on a Roll
I think it's hilarious that Cuba has defeated Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and now is going to the finals of the WBC. One would figure Bud Selig is humiliated by the whole thing, with the major league players getting beaten by non-major leaguers, and from an unfriendly country to boot. And the fans in the US were even behind Cuba! The whole thing is just delicious. Good for them.
posted by Todd Martin at 10:02 PM
3 Comments:
Cuba never beat the US heads up. The big problem with their success is the dimwits in the media are going to start believing the Cuban league is some kind of major league and only the US and Castro governments are standing between the Cubans taking the majors by storm. The reality is much different. Clay Davenport of Baseball Prospectus, the world's foremost expert on league difficulty did some simulations based on his work for the WBC. He found the Cubans as having a 2.66% chance to win the tournament (ninth overall). Korea, a semifinalist, was eighth at just over 3%. What we're seeing is the folly of determining a "champion" based on eight games, it's simply not significant.
It's already happening. Jayson Stark has wrote a utterly absurd column on ESPN calling the Cubans "major-league quality." You cannot determine ANYTHING in baseball based on eight games, heck not even one season is enough. Consider the Dodgers' 15-3 (or so) start last year and the Astros 15-30 start. And look where they ended up. Furthermore, Cuba's already lost twice, once by the slaughter rule. It's a Cuba-Japan final and both teams combined are 9-5. This whole thing is absurd, either do it right (more games, fewer teams [South Africa?!], middle/end of season, more quality players, etc.) or don't do it at all. Sorry for the lengthy rant.
17haze,
With all due respect, your comments are a bit off. Firstly, Cuba's national team is a very young one with around half the players in either their first or second international tournament. Secondly, they don't play together all the time, only for the World Cups and Olympics, or every other year. That's still more often than the US, DR and others but hardly often. Thirdly, while camaraderie and team unity matter, it can no way account for the disparity between talents here. Baseball is very much an individual sport in that it is a series of one pitcher-on-one hitter matchups. Cuba is nowhere near the top five teams in this tournament much less the top.
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