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WBC 2013 Final Results, Recap And Review
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Follow @mlbreportsWednesday March 2oth, 2013
- Congrats to the Dominican Republic: The 2013 World Baseball Classic Champions!
Jonathan Hacohen (Lead Baseball Columnist, Oakland A’s Correspondent and Website Founder): Follow @Jhacohen
After the initial WBC in 2006, the tournament returned in 2009. The decision was made to have the WBC played three years after the inaugural edition and then four years later from there.
As result, after a long wait for baseball fans…the third World Baseball Classic was back for the 3rd edition in 2013.
It was a thrilling March- with the final 2 countries facing off for global baseball supremacy: The Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico. The DR won the game 3-0 behind the MVP bat of Robinson Cano.
Congrats to the Dominican Republic on being crowned the 2013 WBC Champions!
Yoenis Cespedes: While Cuba Misses Their Star in the 2013 WBC – the A’s Slugger Looks to be an A.L. MVP Candidate
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From Cuba to A.L. MVP? Despite not being able to represent his native country in the WBC, Cespedes is a year older and wiser. The more he adjusts to North America life and baseball, opposing pitchers will shudder even more each time Cespedes comes to the plate.
Jonathan Hacohen (Lead Baseball Columnist, Oakland A’s Correspondent and Website Founder): Follow @Jhacohen
It’s pretty ironic if you ask me. The 2013 World Baseball Classic is here and Cuba is off to a huge start. I had to pick a winner and went with Cuba as my pre-tournament favorite. Considering that Japan has won both editions of the WBC, Cuba was definitely going to be in tough. To top it all off, they are starting off the first two rounds in Japan. Why is it ironic? For Cuba is missing its biggest star for the tournament. Yoenis Cespedes, the Oakland A’s star outfielder is in Arizona for Spring Training.
Far away from the bright lights of Japan, where Cuba finally beat its nemesis this week in WBC play after several failed attempts in the past. With that monkey off their back, Cuba has made the statement that they are ready to win it all. But yet without their biggest star. For when one defects from Cuba, they are forever banished from representing their country again in any baseball capacity.
I couldn’t help but think watching Cuba play in Japan this week that in fact Cespedes and the A’s opened their season last year in Japan. Cespedes actually started off his season with a bang out there and never looked back. On March 29th last year, Cespedes had a home run in the 2nd game of the A’s young season. That bomb in Japan was the start of the legend. Who knew that Cespedes would actually be in Japan a year too early? For all the success that Cuba has enjoyed thus far in the 2013 WBC, imagine if they had Cespedes anchoring that lineup?
Cuba may very still win the 2013 WBC. My money is on that happening. But if Cuba falls short yet again, the what if scenarios will endlessly get bounced around. What if the team had Aroldis Chapman? Alexei Ramirez? And most of all, Yoenis Cespedes? Until Cuba allows its defectors to come home again, the talent drain will continue to affect the country in international tournaments.
Yoenis Cespedes 2012 Highlights Mature Lyrics so Parental Guidance is Advised:
Cuba Is Ready To Win The 2013 World Baseball Classic
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Pedro Luis Lazo. One of Cuba’s greatest pitchers of all-time. Considered also one of the best pitchers in the history of baseball not to pitch in the big leagues. A legend, he represented Cuba in the 2006 and 2009 WBC tournaments. He will be missed in this year’s edition.
By Jonathan Hacohen (Lead Baseball Columnist, Oakland A’s Correspondent and Website Founder): Follow @Jhacohen
Going into the 3rd edition of the World Baseball Classic, the #1 question that I get asked on a daily basis is: “Which country will win it all?” A fair question, as all sports fans (not just baseball ones) love to predict champions before the first game is even played. Given that Japan has won the first two WBC titles (2006 and 2009), they have to be the favorites going into this year’s tournament. But as every new WBC edition begins, every country begins to get hungrier and hungrier. We had a qualifier tournament recently, the inaugural one for a WBC. 16 countries battled it out to win the 4 coveted spots into the tournament. Chinese Taipei, Brazil, Canada and Spain will field teams next month.
Canada and Chinese Taipei were two of the four countries that did not receive automatic entries and were required to qualify. Brazil and Spain were the newcomers that got their first taste of the WBC…and evidently loved it. So who will be it folks? Japan beat Korea in 2009 and Cuba back in 2006. Ironically, Cuba lost to Japan twice back in the 2nd round of 2009. If not for Japan, Cuba would have at least WBC title under their belts. Maybe two. So who does Cuba get in their group as part of the 1st Round of the 2013 WBC? Japan, of course. This time around, things will be different. Cuba is ready to knock the Japanese gorilla off their backs and take the 2013 World Baseball Classic.
MLB Reports State Of The Union Part 2: Going Forward
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By Chuck Booth (Lead Baseball Analyst/Website Owner): Follow @chuckbooth3024
So I left off the other day talking about some sweeping changes at the site. What I want to talk about next – is what to expect. Our website is revving up to start the baseball year. We plan on posting 3-5 times a day. We will range from about 9 AM EST all the way through to 9 PM EST. Most MLB teams will have about 3-4 articles a month. Once per month May-October, we will also have our Monthly Power Rankings like we had last year. Our Lead Writer Sully will be posting a 20 minute daily PODCAST on the site.
In addition to this, MLB Reports presents the ‘Triple Play Podcast” – will be going ahead with Patrick and Chris with the Big Ticket Show, for about 5 PODCASTS a month during the regular season and about 1-2 per month in the winter months. These PODCASTS will feature yours truly 2-3 times a month as a guest. We will also have Saul Wisnia (Red Sox Correspondent), Jonathan Hacohen (MLB Reports Founder) and other personalities as part of the show.
We plan on interacting with the readers by way of Facebook and Twitter, when we start-up in March. So we will let you know. We have about 7 different general writers and reporters, 5 special analysts and 24 Team Correspondents so far. The goal is to find the 6 new Correspondents from the teams we have left (PHI, ATL, SEA, SD, KC and COL We continue to search for awesome independent writers, that can cover these teams with the same kind of passion our other Correspondents have displayed.
We still plan on having a weekly Fantasy Baseball article, a once a month Cooperstown article and a once a month – live interview from our ‘Junior Reporter’ Haley Smilow. We are also open to many suggestions by our readers, if they have great article ideas.
I am trying to write my historical series on all 30 teams, but am still trying to make it to the regular season first. I have written entire series already for the Nationals, Phillies, Expos, Blue Jays and Rays already here. The plan is to write 1-2 series a month for the teams not done yet. By the end of 2014, we will have a full chronicled series for each team. This will be our legacy. We strive on our mission to include all 30 MLB Fan bases. All of our dedicated Correspondents exhibit the kind of passion for baseball that I am truly proud of. You can see all of their biographies here.
Our general writers and Reporters can be found here.
News:
One of our writers, Thomas Roberts (Dodgers Correspondent), is a top 52 finalist for the MLB Fancave. We hope that he can make it to New York. Please check out the interview (and vote for him on the links provided there) I did with him here
We are going to have 5-6 dedicated pages from our General Writers. I will run a page called “The Baseball Booth”. This is the same as a page listed below here that is for MLB Player Awareness Weeks. In a sub-page to that are my best baseball road-trips advice links here.
Jonathan Hacohen will have his own page called the J-HAY Page.
Saul Wisnia is accomplished writer. He has authored 10 sports books and is one of the best Red Sox authors of late. His page is called the Words Of Wisnia. He will run additional Red Sox articles, and he will have many other fun things to browse in his subpages. You can find all of his archives for his own website here.
Paul Francis Sullivan (Sully) will have his own dedicated page called ‘Sully Baseball’. It is up to Sully to post anything and everything on his own page. I only know whatever he does around baseball is entertaining and worth the time. On the main page, Sully will post his daily Podcast. Subscribe to his daily podcast here.
We may have another website that we will have on board with us to cover a team thoroughly through a dedicated page. We are not finalized yet, so I will announce this on Twitter and Facebook.
We have a few writers from the strosbros.mlblogs.com with us covering the Astros. Lee White and Richard Perez will be keeping it real.
We have Tigers Correspondent Matthew Lafave of the examiner.com – to keep us up to date with what is going on in Detroit.
By the time the regular season rolls on, we will have all 30 MLB Teams Payroll and State Of The Unions done. We are close to finishing the State Of The Unions already. You can view these here.
Here are some really important pages at the Reports. It also says what they are about.
https://mlbreports.com/paystat/
We are going to end every baseball year with a ‘STATE OF THE UNION’ Address for each team and also look forward to the next year’s Payroll for all 30 MLB Teams. This is in addition to all of the other information we will put out in our normal articles. More than ever, team’s salary and current 25 or 40 Man Rosters, are becoming more important to the fanbases. We will take a detailed look at both of these for you and provide some analysis. It will keep us busy and definitely on top of our game. We will be doing these in stages and not all at once, so please check back often for more updates.
https://mlbreports.com/mlbhistory/
This page has links to the entire 30 MLB Teams listed (for a minimum 5 Part Series on each club). These Franchise Series are signature website articles that take 3-4 times the normal amount of regular pieces to write. Do yourself a favor and follow along with us as we take the next 2 years to complete this mission. It is a great way to learn about your Franchises history, including the players, pitchers, management, mascots and the parks they have played in.
https://mlbreports.com/gwr-tracker/
This full-page lists all of the Games I went to in establishing the new “Guinness Book Of World Record” for “Fastest To See A Full Home Game In All 30 MLB Parks from April.6-April.28/2012. The write-ups include many pictures and stories of how I arrived at all 30 MLB Parks and what the travel entailed. I promoted the trip by using Facebook and Twitter and met several top MLB Park Chaser Experts along the way. For someone who may have a similar goal, I think you will find this page quite entertaining.
https://mlbreports.com/awareness/
This was a Twitter concept first driven to a webpage by promoting unheralded players not receiving their due credit. Each week, the MLB Reports will select an active MLB Player and a retired MLB Player to focus their attention on. We will write tweets about the players and showcase them on this page. It is our hope that we can receive some feedback with out twitter followers and website readers. Suggestions may always be presented to us for future nominations.
https://mlbreports.com/wbc-2013/
You have asked for it readers and now it is here! An entire page devoted to the upcoming 2013 edition of the World Baseball Classic! After the initial WBC in 2006, the tournament returned in 2009. The decision was made to have the WBC played three years after the inaugural edition and then four years later from there. As result, after a long wait for baseball fans…the third World Baseball Classic will be back in the year 2013!
The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of mlbreports.com or their partners.***
Chuck Booth- Lead Baseball Analyst/Website Owner and author of the Fastest 30 Ballgames: To learn more about my “The Fastest 30 Ballgames Book” and how to purchase it, click here . You can also follow my Guinness Book of World Record Successful Bid to see all 30 MLB Park in 23 Days- click here. I am happy to be part of such an awesome Magazine-Style Baseball Website and am looking forward to talking to all of the fans of the MLB. You can reach me on Twitter here Follow @mlbreports
Please e-mail me at: mlbreports@gmail.com with any questions and feedback. You can follow us on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook. To subscribe to our website and have the Daily Reports sent directly to your inbox, click here and follow the link at the top of our homepage.
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