Despite the considerable doom-saying at home and abroad that followed Cuba's two WBC losses to Japan, the latest IBAF world rankings have once again firmly established Cuba's unchallenged preeminence among the leading ball-playing nations. Cuba's international supremacy was painstakingly built over a full half-century of dominance in top-level Olympic-style tournaments. It was also often open to much skepticism (mainly the charge that the Cubans won world titles by hammering inferior collegiate squads and not big league pros) and somewhat difficult to measure. The long-overdue IBAF rankings launched this past January have now thankfully provided a clearer measure of Cuba's long-assumed but rarely quantified domination of international tournaments at both the junior and senior levels. Since the Cuban dominance was built brick by brick over a full five decades, it will take far more that a single tournament stumble to dismantle it. That is the primary conclusion to be lifted from the latest IBAF rankings released in the wake of a second World Baseball Classic.

 

A delightful twist to the latest rankings is the fact that while numerous USA writers jumped all over the story of two difficult Cuban losses in San Diego to eventual WBC champion Japan--prematurely citing those games as evidence that Cuba's dynasty had ended and that the search was on for a new world baseball power (was it Venezuela? Team USA? Korea?)--little or nothing has reached American newspapers about this latest IBAF poll which has Cuba still clinging to the cherished top slot. Ironically it was Team USA--despite the American's weaker WBC pool and their eventual short-lived appearance in the semifinals--that slipped appreciably in the new international standings.

 

Four countries made significant moves up or down the ladder in the latest IBAF rankings. The United States tumbled three slots from second to fourth and now has to score some significant international tournament victories in order to retake momentum against the rival Asian powerhouses. Venezuela climbed four notches from fifteenth position to number eleven, but this may be something of an aberration. Venezuela rarely enters competitive teams in any major events other than the WBC, since all the nation's top athletes are now performing for organized baseball in the United States. Panama slid from ninth to twelfth after its two quick WBC losses in San Juan, while Australia, Venezuela and Puerto Rico were all posting multiple victories on the WBC stage. Nicaragua, without a WBC entrant, also experienced the same three-slot drop-off, from number twelve to number fifteen.

 

IBAF March 2009 International Baseball Rankings

 

1. Cuba (1072.18 points) - previous ranking: 1 (1021.50)

2. Korea (939.82 points) - previous ranking: 3 (779.82)

3. Japan (891.00 points) - previous ranking: 4 (691.00)

4. United States (859.32 points) - previous ranking: 2 (799.32)

5. Chinese Taipei (471.82 points) - previous ranking: 5 (458.50)

6. The Netherlands (382.57 points) - previous ranking: 6 (336.57)

7. Mexico (280.25 points) - previous ranking: 8 (238.93)

8. Canada (280.19 points) - previous ranking: 7 (262.19)

9. Australia (214.11 points) - previous ranking: 10 (191.43)

10. Puerto Rico (211.14 points) - previous ranking: 11 (155.82)

11. Venezuela (210.68 points) - previous ranking: 15 (90.68)

12. Panama (206.32 points) - previous ranking: 9 (197.64)

13. Italy (150.88 points) - previous ranking: 13 (118.88)

14. China (125.00 points) - previous ranking: 14 (97.68)

15. Nicaragua (123.50 points) - previous ranking: 12 (123.50)

16. Dominican Republic (105.68 points) - previous ranking: 17 (69.00)

17. Spain (69.50 points) - previous ranking: 16 (69.50)

18. Brazil (41.50 points) - previous ranking: 18 (41.50)

19. South Africa (37.93 points) - previous ranking: 20 (33.93)

20. Germany (36.32 points) - previous ranking: 19 (36.32)

 

The next two IBAF standings will be announced this coming summer and fall, immediately before and immediately after the scheduled September World Cup in Europe. In those next two rankings we can expect Cuba and Korea to further solidify their respective grips on the two top slots. Neither Japan nor the Americans will send crack teams stuffed with major leaguers to European venues in September, since this year's World Cup play (unlike the November 2007 matches in Taipei) falls during the stretch run of both the major league and Japanese league seasons. The remaining 20-team field will thus be left wide-open for the increasingly strong Koreans and revenge-minded Cubans. Even a Korean championship will not dislodge the Cubans from the top slot if the islanders can manage either a silver or bronze medal finish. Clearly the position of Cuba as the dominant world power seems destined to last for at least another year and quite likely well beyond.

 

The IBAF poll is the first attempt to establish relative rankings of the nation's baseball playing countries based on measurable on-field performance at various levels of international competition. The system, developed in conjunction with Harding (Arkansas) University SID Scott Goode, assigns point totals to countries for each IBAF-sanctioned event at the junior and senior levels (including the women's world cup matches). The point totals are 50 for first, 40 for second, 30 for third and 15 for fourth. After fourth place, points are divided evenly among other finishers to assure balance between tournaments featuring vastly different-sized fields. Points awarded for a country's finishes are then multiplied by a strength factor designed to weigh properly the highest level events. Major world events receive a 4X multiplier (Olympics, IBAF World Cup, World Baseball Classic and IBAF Intercontinental Cup). The Intercontinental Cup has already been slatted for demotion to a second-level event starting with the 2010 international tournament season. More minor world championships also included in these rankings (junior, youth or university world championships, Haarlem Baseball Week, Rotterdam World Port Tournament) are assigned a lesser 1X multiplier. Other continental tournaments (like the Pan American Games or Central American Games) receive multipliers of anywhere between 1X and 0.25X, depending on how many teams (countries) from the current top ten rankings are entered.

 

While most of Cuba's international dominance of the past half-century has involved the vaunted senior national team, the island nation has also displayed considerable strength throughout all other levels of junior and university international championships. This new IBAF ranking system--while not any less flawed than any other imaginable objectified system--does provide a meaningful tool for concrete measurement of the relative strength of any given baseball playing nation. It is through the IBAF rankings that Cuba's recent 2000s-era domination of the international baseball scene--despite the recent entry of top big league pros into these events--to say nothing of its half-century mastery of top international tournaments versus amateur national squads--is now finally being more clearly validated by a truly balanced and objective system of quantification.

The announcement of a 2009 WBC all-star squad has again underscored the dominant theme attached to this year's second edition of the top showcase international tournament. By any conceivable on-field measure, baseball at the highest levels is no longer exclusively or even primarily the special province of Major League Baseball, Inc. Of the eight position players, one designated hitter, and three pitchers tabbed as the best of this year's event, only four are North American big-leaguers; of that quartet, only one--shortstop Jimmie Rollins--is an American, with the other three MLB selections representing Puerto Rico, Venezuela and champion Japan. Three countries (Korea with 4, Japan with 3, and Cuba with 2) placed multiple selections on the all-star roster, and Cuba--represented by slugging outfielders Frederich Cepeda and Yoennis Céspedes--was the only country not reaching the semifinals to nonetheless be represented by more than a single all-star selection.

 

2009 WBC All-Star Selections

 

Catcher: Ivan Rodríguez (Puerto Rico/Houston Astros)

First Base: Tae Kyun Kim (Korea)

Second Base: José López (Venezuela/Seattle Mariners)

Third Base: Bum Ho Lee (Korea)

Shortstop: Jimmie Rollins (USA/Philadelphia Phillies)

Outfielders: Frederich Cepeda (Cuba), Yoennis Céspedes (Cuba), Norichika Aoki (Japan)

Designated Hitter: Hyun Soo Kim (Korea)

Pitchers: Jung Keun Bong (Korea), Hisashi Iwakuma (Japan), Daisuke Matsuzaka (Japan/Boston Red Sox)

MVP: Daisuke Matsuzaka (Japan)

 

The numbers reflected by the WBC 2009 all-star squad can be broken down in several interesting ways. The listing by countries is as follows: Korea 4, Japan 3, Cuba 2, and one each for Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Team USA. This ten competing countries failed to land a single representative on the elite squad, and all selections--with the exception of the two Cuban outfielders--came from the four semifinalists. Two of the three pitching selections, including the concensus MVP, were precisely the two hurlers who handed Cuba their only two tournament defeats and thus blocked the 2006 sub-champions from returning to the semifinal round. Rollins was something of an ironic choice at the shortstop post since he alternated with Derek Jeter between the infield and DH positions throughout the two week event. And finally, big league stars were represented by only a single pitcher--and then a pitcher who has spent the bulk of his career as an all-star in his own native Japanese league.

 

One conclusion jumps again to the forefront here. The tournament which was originally designed by MLB management with a prime objective of showcasing celebrity big league stars in an international forum has for a second straight outing accomplished just the opposite. Not only has no team yet reached the finals of this event with more than two big leaguers on its roster--Japan had one in 2006 and two in 2009, Korea one in this year's finale, and Cuba none back in 2006--but the tournament's top individual performers have in the main come from outside MLB rosters. WBC edition two underscored once more that some of the world's best baseball is being played in domestic leagues in Japan, Korea, and Cuba. And the Americans (who claim creation and moral ownership of the "major" professional league that is now nearly half filled with imported Latin American and Asian talent) are in particular notably less and less prepared to compete on an equal footing in the increasingly glamorous arena that is today's international baseball. Is baseball still truly America's national game? This year's star-studded WBC all-star cast would hardly offer any indication that it is.

Cuban reliever Yolexis Ulacia tonight achieved one of the most usual (and perhaps even entirely unprecedented) statistical oddities during Cuba's 16-4 "mercy rule" demolishing of Mexico in World Baseball Classic Pool B play. Ulacia relieved with two outs and two aboard in the top of the seventh, with his team leading only 7-4. Batter Jorge Vázquez therefore represented the game's tying run. Ulacia promptly struck out Vázquez (looking) to end the inning and the Mexican threat.

In the bottom of that same frame the Cuban juggernaut exploded for 9 tallies, the final three coming on Freddie Cepeda's walk-off three-run blast over the center field fence. Cepeda's homer stretched the margin to 12 runs and the game thus immediately ended due to international baseball's ten-run mercy rule (the game ends once there is a ten-run margin at any time after the home seventh).

The result of these events was that Yolexis Ulacia was credited with a game "save" despite the fact that his team triumphed by a 12-run margin. I doubt this has ever happened before, certainly not at the higher levels of organized baseball. It is a circumstance that seemingly could only occur under the conditions of international baseball's special 10-run "knockout" regulation. 

For those of you wishing to examine my original article on the half-dozen reasons why Cuba "might" capture the WBC (viz. Manpower, Manager, Mid-Season Form, Matchups, Mystique, Marines versus Mercenaries), the original on-line version (in English) is found at the following link:

http://www.baseballdecuba.com/WBCnewsContainer.asp?id=1313

An interesting Cuban press response to my article (in Spanish, in a story published in Juventud Rebelde on Thursday, March 12) is now also available on line:

http://www.juventudrebelde.cu/especiales/clasico-mundial-beisbol/noticias-cmb/2009-03-12/un-batazo-que-estremecio-tambien-a-mexico/

I will be doing a new daily World Baseball Classic blog on Havana's on-line magazine HAVANA TIMES, reporting on events surrounding Team Cuba and the rest of the WBC field in Mexico City, San Diego and Los Angeles. The first entry about the impact of "defectors" on Cuba's national team prospects was posted March 1 and there will be daily entries beginning on March 6/7. The blog "diary" page can he reached at http://www.havanatimes.org/.