Saturday, March 16, 2013

WBC final four countries 2012 MBL players.

With team USA eliminated last night the World Baseball Classic (WBC) has teams these four teams remaining:
- Dominican Republic
- Japan
- Puerto Rico
- Kingdom of the Netherlands

Obviously more front line pitching could have changed things for all the teams.  Team USA was missing Justin Verlander and Clayton Kershaw. Ryan Braun, born in California, was in the USA outfield but so was Giancarlo Stanton, born in Panama and eligible for team Panama. It's a tangled web.

I was curious what 2012 Major Baseball League (MBL) players were born in the final four countries. Click this link to view the names.

Wow. Domincan Republic had 128 players. Most prominent among the missing was Albert Pujols.

Japan had 16, including missing players outfielder Ichiro Suzuki and pitchers Yu Darvish and Hiroki Kuroda.

Puerto Rico had 15 with no notables missing from the team.

Kingdom of the Netherlands:

The four parts of the Kingdom – Aruba, Curaçao, the Netherlands, and Sint Maarten ... 10 October 2010...  the Netherlands Antilles were dissolved and Curaçao and Sint Maarten became constituent countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, obtaining the same status as Aruba which seceded from the Netherlands Antilles in 1986.

The Lahman database, which I am using for this data lists these birth countries among the 59 countries for players all time:  Netherlands, Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, Curacao.  I used those four in my query for 2012 MBL players from the Kingdom of the Netherlands.  I found these eight players:


FirstOfnameFirst FirstOfnameLast FirstOfweight FirstOfheight FirstOfbats FirstOfthrows FirstOfteamID FirstOfPOS
Roger Bernadina 200 74 L L WAS CF
Didi Gregorius 185 73 L R CIN SS
Kenley Jansen 220 78 B R LAN P
Andruw Jones 230 73 R R NYA LF
Jair Jurrjens 200 73 R R ATL P
Jurickson Profar 165 72 B R TEX 2B
Andrelton Simmons 170 74 R R ATL SS
Rick VandenHurk 215 77 R R PIT P


Only Gregorius and VandenHurk are from the Netherlands.  Jurickson Profar is a well regarded young player and he is from Curacao as are Jones and Simmons.  The others are simply listed as born in Netherlands Antilles.

Kingdom of the Netherlands seems to be the one team really doing it with mirrors.

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