For baseball junkies like me, and international baseball junkies like me, yesterday was like Christmas, as the first ever international baseballl rankings were announced.
Countries earn points based on where they finish in a tournament (50 for the winner, 40 for 2nd, 30 for 3rd and 15th for fourth, the rest is dispersed evenly amongst the rest of the participating teams), and all events from the Olympics to the Youth World Championships are considered. Any IBAF sanctioned event counts.
Major tournaments, such as next month’s World Baseball Classic, get 4x multipliers to adaquately show the importance of an event. Other events will receive anywhere from a 1 to a .25x multiplier.
As expected, Cuba is on top with a total of 941.50 points.
Rounding out the top 5 are Korea, bolstered by their first ever gold medal; the United States, helped by their bronze medal in the 2008 Olympics and a win in the FISU World Championships.
Rounding out the top 5 were Japan and Chinese Taipei. As you can imagine, Asia is the highest ranked continent in these rankings. My boys from Canada, who were helped by a 3rd place finish in the 2008 U18 tournament and a 1st place finish in the final Olympic Qualifying Tournament, were ranked 7th.
The Netherlands was the highest ranked European country at 6.
Other notables were: China at 15, Great Britain at 23, and Russia at 30.
The 2008 WBC should provide a boost to the Dominican Republic, which doesn’t participate in many other IBAF events, and if Japan repeats it could provide them enough of a boost to surpass the United States.
The only two teams to not receive points in the rankings were Hong Kong and Pakistan. The full rankings can be found here.
USA!!!!!!!!!
The 1st related post harkens back to a dark day in MLJ’s history, when fellow contributor [editor's note: too much information] tried to secede from this site and start his own blog.
that last related post should be stamped with a NSFW tag.
fetch, excellent work. i think. i didn’t know there was an IBAF, but i pictured you telling me there was by running through a forest and yelling “It’s a fact!”.
/surprisingly few “it’s a facts” online
Does not compute.
6. my bad.
Yes, but why were they announced?
/existential’d
Fetch, great work. My Italian boys haven’t been the same since Raphi Palmero got popped.
i <3 jai alai
its fast and fun
because jai alai is coming to christmas tonight =)
yayyyy!