Nine players who were active as foreign players in the Korean Professional Baseball KBO League will participate in the 2023 World Baseball Classic (WBC), which opens next month.
Representative ‘former KBO leaguers’ are right-handed pitcher Merrill Kelly (Arizona Diamondbacks) and left-handed pitcher Brooks Reilly (New York Mets) of the winning national team. Kelly is called ‘the hit product of the KBO League’. This is because it was ‘reverse exported’ to MLB in Korea. He never stood on the stage of the American Professional Baseball Major League (MLB) and joined the SK Wyverns (now SSG Landers) in 2015.
Kelly, who played an active part in 4 seasons at SK with an average ERA of 3.86 in 119 games, 48 wins and 32 losses, changed his Arizona uniform in 2019. Kelly has been a regular big league starter since his first year back home. He started in all 97 games in the 2019-22 season and posted an average ERA of 3.96 with 36 wins and 35 losses. In 2022, he served as Arizona’s de facto ace with a 13-8 record with a 3.37 earned run average.
Rayleigh joined Team USA as a left-handed bullpen resource. From 2015 to 19, he started for the Lotte Giants, going 48-53 with an earned run average of 4.13. Rayleigh returned to the majors in 2020 and played as a bullpen pitcher. Last year, he played in 60 games for the Tampa Bay Rays, went 1-2 with 6 saves and 25 holds, posting an earned run average of 2.68. The Mets, aiming to win the 2023 season, strengthened their bullpen by signing Rayleigh in a trade. Rayleigh overpowered Lee Jung-hoo (Kiwoom Heroes), who grew up as Korea’s leading hitter while playing in the KBO League, with no hits in 15 at-bats. Korea and the United States will only meet after the semifinals.
Robert Stark (Minor League Milwaukee Brewers), former Doosan Bears, will represent Israel in the WBC. Last year, Stark threw a fast ball with a maximum speed of 158 km per hour at Doosan, posting an average ERA of 3.60 with 9 wins and 10 losses. Stark, who failed to renew his contract with Doosan, signed a minor league contract with Milwaukee. Dutch outfielder Roger Bernardina (Nicaragua Leones) played for the KIA Tigers in two seasons in 2017 and 2018, posting a batting average of 0.315, 47 homers and 64 stolen bases in 270 games. He was also the main player in the 2017 KIA Unified Championship.
Left-handed pitcher Wang Wei-chung (Taiwan), who played for the NC Dinos in 2018, left-handed pitcher Andrew Albers (Canada), who wore a Hanwha Eagles uniform in 2014, infielder Lovel Garcia (Italy), who briefly played for the LG Twins last year, at kt wiz in 2022 Outfielder Henry Ramos (Puerto Rico), who started the season but played only 18 games due to injury, was also selected for the WBC national team. 카지노사이트
There is also a player who will face Korea in Group B in the first round. This is Warwick Saupold (Perth, Australia), who led the Hanwha mound in 2019 and 2020. A right-handed pitcher, Saupold is considered a key pitcher for the Australian national team in this tournament. He pitched in 59 games over two seasons in the KBO League, posting a 22-24 record with a 4.16 ERA. He is also likely to start in the first game against South Korea on March 9 at the Tokyo Dome in Japan. Saupold recorded an average ERA of 5.56 with 3 wins and 2 losses in the 2022-23 season in the Australian league.
Meanwhile, the list of 600 players from 20 countries who will participate in this year’s WBC has also been released. On the 10th, the WBC secretariat announced the participating players through a live broadcast on the MLB official website and the MLB.com website. The 20 participating countries submitted the final list of 30 players to the WBC Secretariat on the 8th, when the entry deadline was reached. According to the WBC secretariat, out of a total of 600 players, 332 are from MLB clubs, more than half of them. There are 186 active big leaguers and 67 former MLB All-Stars included in the 40-man roster.
There are also 8 MLB Most Valuable Player (MVP) recipients. Mike Trout (Los Angeles Angels), Paul Goldschmidt (St. Louis Cardinals), Mookie Betts, Clayton Kershaw (Los Angeles Dodgers, USA), Shohei Ohtani (Angels, Japan), Miguel Cabrera (Detroit Tigers), Jose Altuve (Detroit Tigers) MVP winners such as Houston Astros, Venezuela) and Freddie Freeman (Atlanta Braves, Canada) compete in the tournament with their country’s flag engraved on their chest.
Korea and Japan’s ‘active MVP’ will also sortie. Lee Jung-hoo, who won five KBO league batting titles last season, and Murakami Munetaka (Yakult Swallows), who hit 56 home runs last season and were voted the youngest unanimous MVP in the Nippon Professional Baseball Central League. The two are expected to have a ‘Korean-Japanese genius hitter face-to-face’. Korea, which belongs to Group B along with Australia, Japan, China and the Czech Republic, will challenge to pass the first round of the finals for the first time in 14 years since 2009.