Even after Team USA's comeback win against upstart Italy and Team Canada's surprising, brawl-filled upset against Mexico, there's plenty of World Baseball Classic action from the last 24 hours to go over. Angel Pagan (shown above, not playing for Puerto Rico) and Puerto Rico claimed a second round berth along with the Dominican Republic, while […]

The United States' disappointing loss to Mexico wasn't the only World Baseball Classic action on Friday night/Saturday morning. Team Italy looked to continue their improbable run to the top of Pool D, Spain and Puerto Rico made their tournament debuts, and, most importantly, Cuba and Chinese Taipei just finished up an eliminated game in Tokyo […]

If you watched any of last night's MLB Network pre-game broadcast of Mexico's 5-2 upset win over the United States, you learned pretty quickly that Joe Torre and Team USA were "taking this seriously" and "want[ed] to win" and that "this year would be different." Then, RA Dickey took the mound, Mexico had a 2-0 […]

After a weekend of overnight games and only mild surprises and upsets (Netherlands over South Korea was pretty much the only upset of the first weekend, and it wasn't nearly as big of an upset as some people are pretending that it was), the WBC got into full swing yesterday/last night. The two North American […]

After Tuesday morning's weird mess of tiebreaking rules to sort out who advanced and who didn't from Pool B, Wednesday morning's World Baseball Classic action was refreshingly straightforward: Cuba and Japan had already clinched berths into the second round with their 2-0 records, and all that was left to be decided was seeding. The winner […]

As Australia and Netherlands started their 11:30 PM ET game last night, it seemed like this year's version of the World Baseball Classic was finally going to get some much-needed drama. All four Pool B teams were in action on Tuesday in Taiwan and three of them (Netherlands, Chinese Taipei, and South Korea) more or […]

There were only two World Baseball Classic games early on this Monday morning. Neither of them were particularly compelling matchups, with Cuba and South Korea figuring to far outstrip their opponents from China and Australia, respectively. Nonetheless, the games were important. Cuba could wrap up a second round berth for both themselves and Japan with […]

Day 2 of the World Baseball Classic gave us the debut of both the vaunted Cuban National Team and of the not-so-vaunted Chinese team. We also got to see Japan, Chinese Taipei, the Netherlands, and Brazil all in action for a second time. "See" being a subjective term relating to how much you like sleep. […]

While you were sleeping last night, the 2013 iteration of the World Baseball Classic kicked off over on the other side of the globe with games in Taiwan and Japan. There was a little bit of everything in the three games; a fallen MLB star making good for his home country in the Australia/Chinese Taipei […]

And finally we come to Pool D. The Pool with the United States and Mexico and Canada and … Italy? Yes, and European baseball powerhouse Italy (seriously). It would appear at face value that there's a pretty big gap between Team USA and everyone else in this Pool, but this being the World Baseball Classic, […]

After spending the early part of the week looking at WBC rosters that most American baseball fans can't make head or tails of, today we get to tackle Pool C, which includes talent-laden rosters from Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. Venezuela made it all the way to the semi-finals in 2009 and seem pretty well […]

If Pool A in this year's WBC is relatively straightforward and boring, Pool B looks quite different. In this group, there's 2009 WBC runner-up Korea, there's one of the stronger international teams in Chinese Taipei, and there's Australia and the Netherlands, both of whom field fairly strong teams for non-traditional baseball countries. After the jump, […]

The World Baseball Classic is almost here! OK, so you're not excited, but we at The Outside Corner are. Accordingly, we're going to use the rest of the week to preview each of the first round pools. Today: Pool A. In the first two WBCs, the IBAF lumped all of the Far Eastern teams into […]

This week, you will read quite a few World Baseball Classic previews that will start with a joke about the World Baseball Classic starting on Friday/Saturday and no one even realizing that it was happening. These jokes will be wrong, because the World Baseball Classic actually started with a qualifying round that happened last September.  […]

No matter where they go, the NC Dinos just can't seem to get away from all of the drama and intrigue that surrounds the World Baseball Classic in Asia. Two days ago, the newest entrants in the Korean Professional Baseball League were supposed to take the field in an exhibition matchup against the South Korean […]