With World Baseball Classic 2017 only 24 hours underway and 13 of the 16 participating teams not even played a single inning, POOL A turned into a nightmare for Asian baseball. In the opening game on Monday, Israel beat Korea in extra innings with 2-1 and looked like a team that may have more surprises in mind. Today they made clear they’re not joining the WBC for fun, Israel jumped on Chinese Taipei starting pitcher Chun-Lin Kuo and made him leave the game within 0.2 innings, scoring 4 runs in the first inning. All seem to calm down a little after that, but in the 3rd inning Israel scored another 2 runs.

After 4.2 solid innings, Corey Baker (St.Louis Cardinals organisation) was replaced by Robert Charles Orlan (Washington Nationals organisation). In the 6th inning Chinese Taipei’s bats came alive and with 3 runs  scored.

In the top of the 7th, Israel decided to gear up and never looked back. With 5 runs in the 7th, 1 in the 8th and 3 in the 9th, Israel crushed Chinese Taipei. With 4 runs in the 9th the Asian showed some life, but that was far from enough to erase the 12-run deficit. Israel beats Chinese Taipei with 15-7, batting 20 hits with 2 homers, solid pitching and showed strong defense against baseball loving Chinese Taipei. This was much more than anyone expected. Exciting start of the tournament!

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