Da Techguy's (no longer backup) Blog

Some great games on tap for today:

5 p.m. Italy vs Venezuela

Hugo’s boys took Italy lightly and played a little sloppy early but the Italians failed to take advantage of men on base. I still get the feeling that they take them lightly, and the Italians have shown they can put runs on the board.

If Italy can score early then its anyone’s game. The Italian defense is going to be the key here. I’d like to see Italy bounce Hugo’s boys but I wouldn’t be willing to bet money on it.

5:30 p.m. Netherlands vs Dominican Republic

When they scheduled this game It was expected that it would be Panama vs Puerto Rico instead Panama is already out, Puerto Rico is in and the Dominican Republic wants revenge for its most humiliating defeat ever.

They will be gunning for the Dutch and look to put them away early, It will call come down to the Dutch starter in that respect. If they fall behind again I think they might crack like an egg. Robbie Cordemans being available might make all the difference.

The Dutch have to score period! If they can’t score they can’t win.

10:00 p.m. Cuba vs Australia.

Tonight we find out if the crushing of Mexico was a fluke or not. If Australia can put up the numbers against Cuba then there will be sweating in Mexico tomorrow.

I feel bad for the Cuban convict team. It’s hard to spend your life in a prison and know that if you try to escape your family will suffer, it must be even harder to have to play for your jailer. The sheer joy of Baseball is a partial release but its still a convict team playing under guard.

My take, I have no problem with them advancing if it means some of their guys can jump the fence and escape, if they are just going to stay prisoners, they might as well get bounced now and go back to prison.

A quick roundup of the games.

Puerto Rico 3 – Holland 1.

When I heard that Manager Jose Oquendo what asked how he would handle his pen if he was trailing was beside himself at the suggestion that he would be trailing, that insulted me as a fan and made me adamantly a fan of the Dutch, They held to that one run lead in the 8th thanks to incredible pitching and defense including two men thrown out at the plate but there are only so many walks you can give up before a good team is going to break through.

I’m not sure if holding back Robbie Cortemas is going to haunt them but if they can somehow get a lead against the Dominican team that is out for revenge big time, keeping him back is going to turn out to be a stroke of genius.

I hit the sack and didn’t watch the South Africa/Mexico game. It was not any kind of a surprise to me. What will be interesting is who they are going to be playing.

I couldn’t watch the Italy Canada game. If anyone told me that Canada was going to be the first team bounced from the tourney in group C I would have laughed at the suggestion. The Canadians aren’t laughing now. Italy apparently played a good game. The question is will they be underestimated again?

Last week I posted the following:

It will take a real miracle for Cuba or Mexico to fail to get to the 2nd round sharing a bracket with South Africa and Australia. Australia would like to think otherwise but sorry that’s the way it is.

Looks like nobody told Australia as they had to invoke the Mercy rule as they crushed Mexico 17-7 after being down 7-3 after 4.

Tim Blair didn’t post on it, a shame as its a huge win.

I was about as wrong as I could be, even more wrong then my prediction that Panama would beat Puerto Rico. Not only did they not win but than managed to go scoreless for the entire tourney!

On the Bright side Hugo’s boys were spanked by us. That was nice.