Tag: Panama

That’s Amaury News and Commentary: 67th Caribbean Series Dominican Dominance

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Players of Puerto Rico celebrate after a Caribbean Series baseball consolation game against Venezuela at Nido de los Aguilas stadium in Mexicali, Mexico, Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.Fernando Llano – AP

By Amaury Pi Gonzalez

The title game took place in Hermosillo, México. The Dominican Republic won its 23rd Caribbean Series championship as it beat the previously unbeaten Charros de Jalisco, representing the host country, México.

The Leones del Escogido, representing the Dominican Republic, managed by Albert Pujols, beat the Mexican squad by the final score of 1-0. Esmil Rogers and the Leones pitching staff blanked the Mexicans by throwing a one-hitter for the 1-0 victory.

With the victory, the Dominican Republic continues its dominance of this tournament, as they now have won 23 titles. This series has been won by 29 teams from seven different countries.

History and Championships of the Caribbean Series by countries Dominican Republic 23, Puerto Rico 16, México 9, Cuba 8, Venezuela 8, Panamá 2, and COLOMBIA 1

Amaury Pi-Gonzalez – Cuban-born Pi-González is one of the pioneers of Spanish-language baseball play-by-play in America. Began as Oakland A’s Spanish-language voice in 1977, a role he continues to this day (interrupted by stops with the Giants, Mariners and Angels). Voice of the Golden State Warriors from 1992 through 1998. 2010 inducted in the Bay Area Radio Hall of fame

World Baseball Classic: Packing for Phoenix

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World Baseball Classic logo (mlb.com image)

Packing for Phoenix

March 9, 2023

By Lewis Rubman

For the first time since its inception in 2006, the World Baseball Classic will not stage its semi-final and final games in California. San Diego hosted the first championship round, followed by Los Angeles in 2009, San Francisco in 2013, and then it was back to Dodger Stadium in 2017.

This year the closest Bay Area fans will get to the action will be Phoenix, one of the four venues for the first round. Teams representing the United States, Mexico, Colombia, Canada, and Great Britain will duke it out in Chase Field. This quintet has been designated as Group C. The teams with the two best won-lost records in this round will advance to the quarter finals, AKA round 2, where they’ll face the two top finishers of Groups A,B, and D.

Now, let’s take a look at those groups.

Group A, consisting of the Netherlands, Cuba, Italy, Panama and what the organizers refer to as Chinese Taipei opened the action when the Netherlands beat Cuba 4-0 in Taichung Intercontinental Baseball Stadium on what was March 7 here, but the afternoon of March 8 in Taiwan.

In what was the nightcap in Asia, visiting Panama pummelled the host team, 12-5, but outhit them by only one run, 14-13. No other scores were in for either of the Asian venues when I took a break for packing my bags for Phoenix to write this. Group A’s next round, AKA the quarter finals, will be played in Taichung, with the sole surviving squad moving on to Miami for the championship round, i.e., the semi-final and final series.

Japan, Korea, Australia, China, and the Czech Republic make up Group B. Their first game is scheduled to start in the Tokyo Dome at 4:00 pm here on a west coast Wednesday afternoon, about two hours from now, and will feature Australia and Korea. The advancing teams will remain in Tokyo for the quarter-finals and then go to Miami for the semi-final and final rounds.

Group D consists of Puerto Rico, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Israel, and Nicaragua. They’ll play their games in Miami, starting with the Puerto Rico-Nicaragua match up at 9:00, Pacific time, on March 11. The team that wins this Group D first round at loanDepot Park will continue to play there as long as they remain in the running.

All of the above invites a few questions. Among them are how does a team qualify, what is the basis on which a qualifying team is assigned to one group rather than another, how are teams ranked with their pools?

There are three criteria for qualification. They are

  • The host country automatically qualifies. As with sausages, it’s best not to inquire about what goes into making the decision of which country that will be. • Any team that reached the 2017 semi-finals makes it into the first round in 2023 and will be the top seed in its group. • This point is delicate. MLB, the WBC’s parent organization, describes it this way: “… the remaining teams will be assigned based on December 31, 2021, WBSC [World Baseball Softball Confederation] rankings in order to guaranteed [sic] competitive balance. Commercial, geographic and geopolitical considerations may also be applied to this process.”

Let that last sentence sink in. When you’ve done, you can clear your mind by glancing at MLB.com’s ranking of the top ten teams. They are

1) The Dominican Republic 2) The USA 3) Japan 4) Puerto Rico 5) Mexico 6) Venezuela 7) Cuba 8) Canada 9) Italy 10) Korea.

I chose this source because I couldn’t find the final 2021 WSBC ratings and, in any case, 2022 was not a good year for lower level baseball and softball. I don’t know how accurate this MLB.com table is, but I suspect that it’s relevant that, of the four previous WBC titles, Japan has won two and the Dominican Republic and the United States have won the two remaining crowns. Cuba, the Netherlands, and Korea also have had notable success in the tournament.

In my next article, I’ll discuss, among other things, some thorny “geographic and geopolitical considerations” that could affect the inclusion and group placement of a country as well as individual players’ eligibility to play for any given team. After that, I plan to send two more dispatches before I begin reporting on the games of the Phoenix round on March 11. They will deal with other tournament rules and with the representation of players from bay area teams in the WBA.

2020 Caribbean Series: Mexico gets some solid pitching blanks Colombia 4-0

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February 5, 2020
By Lewis Rubman
Colombia (0-5)            0      1    0
Mexico (4-1)                  4    10  0
HATO REY PUERTO RICO–In a series notable for its well pitched games, the masterpiece that Mexico’s Edgar Torres  achieved this afternoon stands head and shoulders above the rest. The six foot, 218 pound lefty from Puebla, who toiled ineffectively for the Durango Generals of the Mexican League last summer and had an unimpressive record of 4-6, 3.96 for the Mazatlán Deers of the Mexican Pacific League this past fall, hurled seven and two-thirds of nearly impeccable baseball against the Montería Buckaroos of the Edgar Rentería Colombian Baseball League, Colombia’s representative.That the Colombian contingent isn’t a powerhouse helps put Torres’s achievement in perspective, but it remains an achievement.
In his labor of nearly eight innings, Torres threw 97 pitches, 69 of which were strikes, to 24 batters. The only hit he allowed was a first inning single to Brallán Pérez, and Torres picked him off first almost immediately after that. The only other base runner he allowed was José Brizuela, on a fifth inning walk. Torres’s ground out to fly out ration was 10:3.
Mario Meza mopped up with a perfect inning and a third of relief.
The Mexicans didn’t score until the fifth, when Juan Gamboa singled and advanced to third on José Guadalupe Chávez’s single to right, scoring moments later on a wild pitch by Colombia’s starting pitcher, Edinson Frías. Rico Noel´s single brought Chávez home.
That was all that Mexico needed, but Roberto Peña’s two run homer in the seventh gave them some more breathing room.
Mexico is assured of a play off berth, but we’ll have to wait for the results of tonight’s game between Puerto Rico and the Dominican to see what mathematical calculations, if any, are necessary who plays whom and which team gets last licks.

Panama edges out Colombia 1-0

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By Lewis Rubman

Colombia (0-2) 0 2 2
Panama (1-1) 1 5 2

HATO REY, PUERTO RICO–This morning’s contest between Colombia’s Vaqueros (Cowboys) of Montería and Panama’s Chiquirí Astronautas was, as the score indicates, a close one, a pitchers´duel that wasn’t decided until the last out. It came, appropriately enough, on a strike that was in between a checked swing and a swing and miss. (The home plate ruled it was the later). The tying run was in scoring position.

Panama scored the first, only, and winning run in the bottom of the fourth. After Jhonny Santos flew out to Robinson Cabrera at the foot of the left field fence-the hardest hit ball of the game-a two base error by Mauricio Ramos, the Cowboys´third baseman, set up Isaías Velásquez´s run scoring single to center.

Colombia came close to tying the Panamanians in the top of the eighth in an at bat that showed that this game was not just a pitchers’ duel but a managers’ duel as well. With two outs and a man on second, Vaqueros skipper Ozney Guillén called on left handed batting José Brizuela to hit for the right handed Brallan Pérez.

What made this interesting is that the pitcher was a lefty, Davis Romero. The Astronautas´ manager. Julio Alberto Mosquera, and his pitching coach, Gerardo Casadiego, countered this move by calling on right handed reliever Diego Moreno.

With both sides having gone against the conventional wisdom concerning handedness, the Panamanian brain trust turned out to have made the wiser decision. Brizuela took a called third strike on a three and two pitch.

It was pinch hitter Isranel Wilson who wasn’t able to check his swing in time to prolong the game.

The pitching statistics are worth noting.

Colombia
PItcher IP H R ER BB K PC
Echemendia 4-2/3 3 1 0 1 1 55
Herrera 2-1/3 2 0 0 0 3 25
Almarante 0 0 0 0 1 0 7 (one HBP)
Acevedo 1 0 0 0 1 0 11

Panama
Romero 7-2/3 1 0 0 2 2 80
Moreno 1-1/3 1 9 9 2 4 22

As you would expect, Pedro Echemendia was the losing pitcher, and the win and the save went to Davis Romero and Diego Moreno, respectivey.

Panama, at 1-1, is now a half a game behind yesterday’s winners, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela, and it leads Mexlco by the same margin. Colombia is now two games behind the pace setters.

Puerto Rico, playing as the visitors, takes on Mexico in an hour or so, and the Dominicans will play Venezuela at 8:30.

Caribbean Series Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico edges Panama 4-3; Santiago shuts down Panama in five innings of work

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Puerto Rico pitcher Hector Santiago pitched five innings of work to shut down Panama in a one run win on Saturday. Photo from zimbio.com

By Lewis Rubman

Panama 3 8 2

Puerto Rico 4 9 3     10 innings

HATO REY, PUERTO RICO–Panama participated in the earliest years of the Caribbean Series was played, from its inception in 1949 through its twenty-one year suspension following the 1960 tournament. Indeed, with the victory of the Carta Negra Yankees in 1950, Panama won the Series title in the tournament’s second year. Carta Negra, by the way, was a brewery. It wasn’t until 2019, when the political situation kept Venezuela from hosting the games, which were moved to Panama City, That the isthmus nations returned to Series competition and the Toros de Herrera substituted for the Venezuelan entry. The newcomers surprised everybody by winning the Caribbean Crown. Panama is represented this year by the Astronautas from the the volcanic region of Chiquirí.

At 8:20 last night, Atlantic Time, the Astronautas went to bat against the Cangrejeros (Crabbers) of Santurce, Puerto Rico’s entry. Panama threatened their hosts in each of the first three innings, suffering The Curse of the Lead Off double in the opening frame, getting their first batter on base through a single and a walk in the second and third, respectively. But Héctor Santiago, Puerto Rico’s starter kept the Panamanians slammed the door to home closed on the Panamanians during all five of the innings he pitched.

They finally managed a tally in the top of the sixth, when Devin Raftery relieved Santiago when Jack López drove Jan Hernández home from second with a single to right.

Puerto Rico already had scored a run in the third on Vimael Machín’s sac fly, and they threatened to score again in the bottom of the fifth. But Andy Otero came in to strike out José Sermo with runners on first and second and two down. But one out walk to Jan Hernández, followed by another RBI single by López brought Carlos de Jesús Díaz into the fray in the very next inning. Díaz successfully closed out the frame but was not so successful in the seventh. Machín’s double, a walk, a sacrifice bunt that Díaz himself bobbled for an error, and a walk let in the tying run and left the bases loaded with Crabbers.

Puerto Rico seemed poised to break the game open. Diego Moreno put an end to that thought. Two hard hit balls, a line out to third and a 6-4-3 double play kept the game tied at three.

It stayed that way until the new extra inning, start with a runner on second rule came into play. Panama couldn’t take advantage of it, but Puerto Rico did. With Tyler Wilson toeing the rubber for the Astronautas and Henry Ramos having begun the inning at second, Jan Hernández bunted him over to third. A medium deep fly to left by Jonathan Morales was all that was needed to send the crowd home, or at least to the long lines that blocked the parking lot exits to the street.

Sunday´s games are scheduled to start at 11:00 (Colombia-Panama), 3:30 (Puerto Rico-Mexico), and 8:30 (Dominican-Venezuela).