Wednesday, January 21, 2009

I love me a little controversy


I posted here about the world rankings for baseball. The original post came from Baseball de World.

I guess the official rankings are actually coming from the International Baseball Federation, and it seems as though a little controversy has arisen, as the rankings have been changed. Originally, South Korea was second and the US was third. Now the US has been moved to second and the South Koreans are third.

The reason, for the change, according to the IBF was that:

the points granted to the famous tournament held in Haarlem, Holland, in 2006 and 2008, were not included in the Tuesday final scoring.
Here is an official breakdown of the points for each country.

Having umpired for years, I know the idea behind any of this is to get it right. So if the points were miscalculated, then it's only fair to redo and rank the countries accordingly. Unfortunately, anytime the US is involved, and particularly when we move up, there is always concern for controversy. The South Koreans, however, are taking it very well, and put the problem down to:
confusion may have been caused by a miscalculation of points

I guess they don't really have anything to complain about, but its nice to see them not turning this into an international incident. Oh, wait....

Anyhow, here are how the points are awarded.

Maybe the BCS could take a look at this and see how it works. The rest of the top 10:

4. Japan 691.00
5. Taiwan 458.50
6. Holland 336.57
7. Canada 262.19
8. México 238.93
9. Panama 197.64
10. Australia 191.43

I think Panama is a surprise in the top 10, and Holland most definitely is. But isn't that a good thing?

No comments: