The Week in International Baseball (1-7 December)

With the Under-23 Pan-American Championship in the middle of play, much of the news centred around the tournament, but plenty of other news broke in early December.

Taiwan was confirmed as the third team for the 2018 Honkbal Week (link).

We live-tweeted games from the Pan-America and noted that the Dominican Republic qualified for the World Cup (tweet).

Our lead writer, Gabriel Fidler, was a guest again on the Batflips & Nerds podcast, discussing Great Britan Baseball and the MLB offseason (link on tweet).

México and Venezuela also qualified for the U23 World Cup (tweet). We listed interesting prospects in the Pan-American title match between the two, including Mexicans Julian Ornelas, Javier Salazar, Fabricio Macias, Asael Sanchez, and the Rangers’ Jose Cardona. We also noted who was missing from Mexico’s squad (Julio Urias, Luis Heredia, Alex Verdugo, and Roberto Osuna):

Amazingly, Jays' closer Roberto Osuna is still eligible for an Under-23 competition!

— Extra Innings UK (@ExtraInningsUK) December 3, 2017

Final rankings for the Pan-American Championship, with the top four qualifying for the 2018 World Cup:

Pan Am U-23 Final Standings – ✈️Top 4 going to @WBSC #U23WorldCup 2018
1st 🇻🇪VEN 🏆🥇
2nd 🇲🇽MEX 🥈
3rd 🇵🇷PUR 🥉
4th 🇩🇴DOM
5th 🇨🇺CUB
6th 🇵🇦PAN
7th 🇨🇴COL
8th 🇧🇷BRA
9th 🇦🇷ARG
10th 🇭🇳HON
11th 🇵🇪PER
12th 🇨🇷CRC

T pic.twitter.com/3cxmyFSyia

— ⚾ WBSC (@WBSC) December 3, 2017

In the aftermath, we tweeted translations of various national federations note of gratitude: Panamá (tweet), Puerto Rico (tweet and tweet), Venezuela (tweet), and a summation of 2017 the Dominican Republic (tweet). We also broke the news in English that a player for Puerto Rico signed a winter ball contract in Panamá (tweet).

The Blue Jays donated hats to Zambia Baseball:

Thank you @BlueJays for the awesome hats for the baseball players and kids in Zambia. pic.twitter.com/UbLh5TConB

— Zambia Baseball (@ZambiaBaseball) December 5, 2017

Panamá was granted the right to host the 2018 Under-15 World Cup (tweet).

South African national hurler and Mariners’ prospect visited his homeland (tweet).

France and South Africa announced plans for a friendly series in South Africa in 2018 (tweet), while South Africa will play the Yoshida Challenge in 2019 (link).

Italy’s Pat Venditte signs with the Dodgers (tweet).

The Dubai Cup is announced by WBSC, with Pakistan and India scheduled to play two games later in the month (link).

Previous articles in this series include:
15-30 November (link)
1-14 November (link)
15-31 October (link)
1-14 October (link)
Month of September (link)
27 August-2 September (link)
20-26 August (link)