The Premier 12 tournament returns for the first time in five years following 2019.
The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) announced on the 12th (Korean time) that “WBSC Premier 12, the most important international baseball competition, will be held from November 10 to 24 next year.” The Premier 12, which started with the first competition in 2015 and lasted until the second competition in 2019, is a competition held every four years, but due to the aftermath of COVID-19, the schedule of major competitions such as the Tokyo Olympics, World Baseball Classic (WBC), and Hangzhou Asian Games were postponed, resulting in 5 It was held after a year.
The top 12 countries in the WBSC world rankings will participate in Premier12 as of the end of 2023. Six teams will be divided into two groups and play in the group stage, and the top two teams from each group will advance to the super round. The teams that placed 1st and 2nd in the super round will compete in the finals, while the 3rd and 4th place teams will compete for bronze medals.
Group A matches will be played in the United States from November 10 to 14, while Group B will be played in Taiwan from November 14 to 18. The opening match will be held at Nagoya Dome, Japan on November 13th. The Super Round will be held at Tokyo Dome in Japan from November 21st to 23rd, and the final and bronze medal match will be held on November 24th.
The Korean baseball team has suffered a series of humiliations in international competitions in recent years after finishing second in the Premier 12 competition in 2019. At the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, he finished fourth and returned empty-handed and without a medal, and at the WBC held in March this year, he had to accept the shocking result of being eliminated early in the first round.토스카지노
Amid poor performance, the loss in the Korea-Japan match was even more painful. Korea faced Japan twice in the 2019 Premier 12 and suffered defeat in both cases (8-10 loss in the super round and 3-5 loss in the final). They aimed for revenge at the Tokyo Olympics, but instead of the promised 8th inning, they suffered a nightmare 8th inning and lost again 2-5. Then, at the WBC, they suffered the humiliation of losing with a shocking score of 4-13, avoiding only a cold game.
Korea has good memories from the last two Premier 12 tournaments. In the first tournament in 2015, in the semifinal match between Korea and Japan, Korea was down 0-3 until the bottom of the 8th inning, but then made a comeback with a 4-3 score in the 9th inning, creating a famous game called ‘Tokyo Battle’, and won the inaugural championship by beating the United States 8-0 in the final. occupied. In the 2nd tournament in 2019, although they lost to Japan, they achieved a good result of finishing as runners-up. However, the problem of generational change, which has been consistently pointed out, ultimately hindered Korean baseball at the Olympics and WBC.
The Korean baseball team will begin a full-fledged generational change through the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games. Attention is being paid to whether Korean baseball can go through a successful generational change process and wash away its humiliation at the Premier 12 held in November next year.