The official list of players from the U.S. provisional roster of 60 players who have begged off is now at four: Barry Bonds, Lance Berkman, Tim Hudson, and Crawford.
As for other countries, players who have dropped out after being placed on the roster are:
Mexico: Nomar Garciaparra
Panama: Mariano Rivera
This does not count players who asked not to be considered to start off with such as Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, and Tadahito Iguchi. Or even guys like Kazuo Matsui, whom the Japanese didn't want.
Also not playing in the WBC, contrary to an article today on MLB.com are Daisuke Miura (Yokohama), Masahide Kobayashi (Lotte) and Fumiya Nishiguchi (Seibu). All three men are on the provisional roster, but none is going to actually see action when the tournament starts barring illness or injury. So the space devoted to Masahide was wasted. Both Miura and Nishiguchi are going to be the likely Opening Day starters for their teams, Nishiguchi due to Matsuzaka participating in the WBC.
I'm also not sure of the assertion that Matsuzaka is being held out of starting in the early rounds when the last information I saw was that the rotation is going to be
Uehara, who will start against China, Watanabe, Matsuzaka and either Tsuyoshi Wada or (more likely) Toshiya Sugiuchi. Oh is going to double up on his starters due to the pitch count issue, so maybe that was what the writer was alluding to. But technically, Matsuzaka is part of the four man rotation. Moreover, Daisuke's pitch counts were in line with what you see in MLB, with the exception of two starts where he got into the 140 pitch range.
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Anyhow, now I'm a little worried that Carl Crawford is going to come over here and beat me up.
I'm also not sure of the assertion that Matsuzaka is being held out of starting in the early rounds when the last information I saw was that the rotation is going to be
Uehara, who will start against China, Watanabe, Matsuzaka and either Tsuyoshi Wada or (more likely) Toshiya Sugiuchi. Oh is going to double up on his starters due to the pitch count issue, so maybe that was what the writer was alluding to. But technically, Matsuzaka is part of the four man rotation. Moreover, Daisuke's pitch counts were in line with what you see in MLB, with the exception of two starts where he got into the 140 pitch range.
Comment status: comments have been closed. Baseball Toaster is now out of business.