Havana, Nov 2 (Prensa Latina) After the conclusion of the Cuban team’s tour of South Korea, prior to the Premier 12 baseball tournament, many doubts remain about their chances, and while they may prove unfounded, there’s still room for concern.
Bearing in mind that we are talking about warm-up matches, and that the island’s team is still missing some key players, it is illogical to rely on an early opinion and question the team’s good performance in the event that is to bring together the best-ranked countries in the world, according to the World Baseball and Softball Confederation.
The team’s management resorted to the wise strategy of letting all players do their thing, including those in reserve, in addition to putting several pitchers on the mound in each game, with the objective of evaluating their performance, physical form and the qualities of those living abroad and playing in foreign professional leagues.
It must remain very clear that these matches do not aim at victory, and based on that premise we can begin to ponder what happened these days in the cities of Ulsan and Seoul.
Notwithstanding, when there remain less than two weeks for Group B to start playing in Taiwan, where Cuba will have to face high-ranked teams the sort of the Dominican Republic, Australia, South Korea (champion in 2015), Japan (current champion) and Chinese Taipei (host), its poor offensive performance and the weakness of some pitchers are striking.
When they played weaker teams, with pitchers more similar to those they are used to deal in domestic tournaments, the Cubans attacked effectively, to the point of scoring seven runs against the Chinese team Jiangsu Huge Horse and 14 against the Goyang Heroes, a team belonging to the second division of that Asian country.
Against the higher-ranked teams, even when some of their star players have left after concluding their professional league, they were only able to score a couple of runs against the LG Twins (they won that game) and one against the NC Dinos, in addition to three in two games against the South Korean national team, which scored a total of 15 innings, 13 of them in the farewell game.
In any case, the tour was very beneficial for several reasons, such as the adaptation to time change, the beginning of competitive appearances and the participation of several players in real games.
The absence of pitchers Yoan Lopez and Ronald Bolanos, allowed for the inclusion of two reserve players, namely Rafael Viñales and Pavel Hernandez, amid the usual controversy that always arises from the exclusion of players with outstanding performance during the tour, with much better results than ohers included in the roster.
Surrounded by a cloud of concern, the Cuban team led by Armando Johnson will travel Sunday to Taiwan, where it will have to play warm-up matches scheduled for the cities of Taichung and Taipei, before the competition starts.
Outdoing its best performance in these competitions, a sixth place in 2015 under Victor Mesa’s coaching, is not a pipe dream, but seizing one of the two tickets in the group and accessing the so-called super game between the four greats of the tournament, is a major challenge.
To the Cuban team, getting rid of the shadow projected by their disappointing outcome of the last edition in 2019, when they barely made it to the tenth, coached by Miguel Borroto, seems like the most achievable immediate goal, but we should not overlook events like the 5th World Baseball Classic, where Cuba came out fourth, demonstrating that on the baseball field anything is possible.
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