All of Australia's games at the 2017 World Baseball Classic will be broadcast live on ESPN and WatchESPN.
Following practice matches in Seoul, South Korea and Osaka, Japan, Australia's opening game of the World Baseball Classic is against Japan at the world-famous Tokyo Dome. Australia's game against Japan will take place on 8 March at 7pm local (9pm AEDT), and will be played in front of an estimated 45,000 strong crowd.
Australia's second game of the opening round sees them match up against China, while their third and final opening round game is against world #5 Cuba.
The World Baseball Classic is the most
prestigious tournament on the international baseball calendar, with the best of
the best from the top baseball nations in the world playing. The first round
takes places in four venues (Seoul, Tokyo, Miami and Guadalaraja). Two teams
from each pool advance to the second round, with the top four teams advancing
to the finals in Los Angeles on 20-22 March.
Australia vs. Japan (LIVE ON ESPN/WatchESPN)
Tokyo Dome
7pm local (9pm AEDT)
Wednesday 8 March 2017
Australia vs. China (LIVE ON ESPN/WatchESPN)
Tokyo Dome
7pm local (9pm AEDT)
Thursday 9 March 2017
Australia vs. Cuba (LIVE ON ESPN/WatchESPN)
Tokyo Dome
12pm local (2pm AEDT)
Friday 10 March 2017
ESPN and WatchESPN will also be broadcasting the second round from Tokyo (12-16 March) and the finals in Los Angeles (20-22 March).
Andy Jones who came in to relieve Blackburn’s Mitchinson had struggled at times for control. Jones would strikeout six, but five walks through three innings was significant. He left bases loaded and no outs in the ninth before being replaced by Nathan Harris who induced a force out at the plate to keep the lead and leave the bases loaded with one-out. That brought Oliver McMahon to the plate who was walked to tie the game 3-3 leaving Alex Hondromatidis to step in and become the game one hero for the Demons.
Scott Mitchinson started the game for Blackburn. He pitched five innings, giving up two runs on three hits while striking out seven.
Andy Mann started the game for Melbourne and was equally as impressive. He tossed four innings, giving up one run, three hits and striking out three. Mann was supported in relief by Shane Kraemer who struck out five through his three innings, before Liam Devine threw two scoreless to pick up the win.
The series now moves to Melbourne on Saturday afternoon for Game 2 where the Demons will look to wrap up the series.
Despite some consistent hitting and a late home run from Allan de San Miguel, Team Australia fell against the world #3 ranked Korean National team 8-3 at the Gocheok Dome in Seoul.
Tim Atherton started the game well for Australia, notching up two scoreless innings, however in the third, Korea struck first care of an RBI single from Korean superstar Seo Geon-Chang.
Korea again struck in the fourth, with three runs being scored, however Australia struck back with their opening run of the ballgame coming in the sixth to cut the margin to three runs. Mitch Dening claimed the RBI after he nailed a groundball off the pitcher's foot which bobbled into centrefield and enabled James Beresford to scamper home from second.
Team Australia manager Jon Deeble was pleased with tonight's performance.
"Our defence was outstanding tonight," Deeble said.
"There's things that we can work on, we learned a lot tonight and it'll hold us in good stead heading to Japan. For the most part we played a pretty good game, I was far from disappointed tonight."
Team Australia manager Jon Deeble was pleased with tonight's performance.
"Our defence was outstanding tonight," Deeble said.
"There's things that we can work on, we learned a lot tonight and it'll hold us in good stead heading to Japan. For the most part we played a pretty good game, I was far from disappointed tonight."
Allan de San Miguel lit up the Gocheok SkyDome in the top of the eighth with a solo home run, while a James Beresford RBI brought the game within two, however a big eighth inning from Korea saw Australia go down 8-3 in their final game of their pre-World Baseball Classic tour in Korea.
Australia now moves to Japan where they take on two of the top Japanese club team's, the Orix Buffaloes and the Hanshin Tigers in Osaka.
Trent D’Antonio and Tom Bailey will take their place on the
28-man World Baseball Classic team following the withdrawals of Liam Hendriks
and Mike Walker.
Walker withdraws due to a fractured finger, while Hendriks
will remain at Spring Training with the Oakland Athletics leading up to the MLB
season.
This opens the door for D’Antonio, who has been a stalwart
of Team Australia, and Tom Bailey, who debuted for Team Australia in 2016. Both
D’Antonio and Bailey will make their debuts at a World Baseball Classic.
Team Australia defeated Hongik University 8-0 in their first
game of the World Baseball Classic tour, while tonight, the Gocheok Dome in
Seoul will light up, as the Australians take on South Korea, a game which is
expected to be seen by millions across Korea.
Australia's opening game of the World Baseball Classic takes place on March 8 at the Tokyo Dome against world #1 ranked Japan.
Following 27 rounds of play only four teams remain as the Division One 2016/17 playoffs kick-off tonight.
After trailing Moorabbin in third place for the better part of the second half of the season, Blackburn cemented a spot in the playoffs with a five-game winning streak to finish the season. Standing in their way of a spot in the Championship are divisional opponents and Eastern Conference leaders Melbourne. Throughout the season the sides met on four occasions, with Melbourne claiming wins in three of the four games. Despite this, Blackburn had seven players named to the 2017 Division 1 All-Star game in comparison to Melbourne’s three.
Daniel Mack leads the list of dangerous hitters in the Blackburn line-up, finishing the season with 33 hits and 11 runs batted in (RBIs) while also posting a 0.371 batting average. On the mound Nathan Harris will be a key figure for Blackburn after posting a 7-3 record and a 2.96 ERA on the season.
However, Blackburn’s pitching staff won’t have an easy series against Melbourne, they will most notably have to find a way to shut down the bat of Nathan Aron. Aron finished the season with 38 hits, 25 RBIs and two home runs. He also hit for a batting average of 0.418 and a 0.475 OBA.
Over in the Western Conference newcomers Fitzroy will have to go through reigning champs Essendon who look to take home the Championship for a sixth season in a row.
Similar to Blackburn, Fitzroy made a late run to secure a position in the playoffs. With Josh Tols (0.20 ERA) absent for WBC duties with Team Australia, Fitzroy’s pitching staff will have to rise to the occasion to stop the defending champs. Tom Dicker has been the standout with the bat for the Lions, finishing with a 0.421 batting average and a 0.513 OBA.
While Essendon’s star studded line-up have seven hitters hitting above 0.300 including Tim Sullivan, Josh Davies, Liam Bedford and Sam Moon. On the mound Gareth Formisano maintains a 6-4 record for Essendon with a 2.04 ERA and will be well supported by a bullpen that runs deep.
Mulgrave 8 defeated Pakenham 1
St Kilda 5 defeated Footscray 1
Behind a pitching performance that only gave up three hits, and some timely late runs, Australia defeated Hongik University 8-0 in their first World Baseball Classic warm-up game.
Travis Blackley was given the start by Jon Deeble and was locked in from the opening pitch, striking out four through three innings of work, only giving up the one hit. The offence took its time to warm up, with an error in the second inning seeing Australia take an early 2-0 lead. From there, both team's pitching and defence reigned supreme, with Blackley, Dushan Ruzic, Josh Tols, Matt Williams and Steve Kent scattering three hits across nine innings.
Team Australia Manager Jon Deeble was impressed with his team's opening hit-out of the World Baseball Classic tour.
"We got out of tonight what we wanted to," Deeble said.
"All of our pitchers threw well, to only give up three hits and one walk is really pleasing. One goal we went in with today was to get as many at-bats into our hitters as possible and with some guys getting five at-bats, we couldn't be happier."
It took until the seventh inning for the Aussies to break the game open, with back-to-back singles from Team Australia stalwarts Allan de San Miguel and Brad Harman extending Australia's lead to four.
A combination of sac-flys, errors, and base hits saw the lead balloon to eight in the blink of an eye, with RBIs from Robbie Perkins and Mitch Dening.
Steve Kent saw the game out with no troubles, and Team Australia made a perfect start to their World Baseball Classic campaign.
Australia's next game of their World Baseball Classic tour sees them take on world #3 ranked South Korea at the Gocheok Dome on Monday 28 February at 7pm local (9pm AEDT).
