Britain suffers heavy defeat to Nicaragua in World Cup

Nicaragua 10, Great Britain 0
Zagreb, Croatia, September 11

Six home runs saw Nicaragua to a 10-0 mercy rule victory this morning in GB’s second game at the Baseball World Cup. It leaves Great Britain needing their first win in Group D in Saturday’s final game against hosts Croatia (16:00 CET).

A win would give GB a chance of qualifying in third place for the next round but the team would need to finish with a better record than at least one of the other groups’ third place finishers to be part of the 14 teams which progress to join Italy and the Netherlands in the second round. If there is a tied win-loss record between third-placed teams the tiebreaker is apparently ‘fewest runs conceded’ in first round games.

With that tiebreaker in mind, GB Head Coach Stephan Rapaglia is likely concerned that his team has conceded 19 runs in two games. The connotations of that will be a little clearer by the end of today’s round of games across the groups when he can see how the defence is faring of the other teams which are likely to finish third in their respective groups. However, there will be too many possible permutations going into tomorrow’s game and GB’s primary aims will be to win and to do it with as few runs conceded as possible. By that logic, where qualification is concerned, a 1-0 defeat of Croatia would be a much more useful result than a 15-5 success would.

Similarly, that today’s game finished in the manner it did – with a solo walk-off home run from Nicaragua’s Sandor Mayorga in the seventh inning which signalled the 10-run deficit ‘mercy rule’ – may also be a blessing in disguise. From a purely pragmatic point of view, it was better that than a two or three-run shot or for GB to string the game out with a couple of runs of their own which might allow the Nicaraguans more time to add to Britain’s ‘runs conceded’ column.

Britain stunned by early home runs

The Central American ball players demonstrated early in the game that they were comfortable with the bat, wiping away the optimism GB had gained from a strong finish against the Japanese the previous day and discarding it over the outfield fences. Starter Alex Smith was hit for three solo home runs in the first inning followed by a grand slam by third baseman Jimmy Morales in the second inning – already his second home run of the game – which effectively wrapped up Smith’s start and gave Britain a daunting 7-0 mountain to climb.

GB had proved a day earlier that it can rally to scale seemingly insurmountable obstacles, having scored five runs in the final inning against Japan to eat away at what had seemed a comfortable seven-run lead for the Japanese. However, today Great Britain looked unlikely to score, managing only two hits in six innings against starter Diego Sandino and constantly thwarted by the opposition’s near-impenetrable infield. Sam Wiley’s 2-for-3 performance was a relative highlight, while on the fielding side, in the fourth inning leftfielder Matt McGraw made a fine throw to the catcher to tag out Sotelo at the plate as he tried to score on Mayorga’s fly ball in the fourth inning.

Nicaragua proved potent throughout the lineup with four players smacking home runs including two apiece for Morales and Mayorga (batting seventh down the lineup). One of the team’s strengths is certainly power hitting as all of its ten runs came via homers.

One positive for Britain was Aeden McQueary’s three innings of relief in which he limited the damage. He came to the mound during the third inning with the score 9-0 and the bases loaded and struck out Justo Granero to end the inning. He went on to allow only run and strike out a total of four.

Box score and play-by-play

Crunch game against Croatia

Coach Rapaglia must now try to re-capture the strong morale his squad exhibited in the latter stages of the Japan game, ahead of tomorrow’s crunch meeting with the Croatians. Britain was expected to find its first two games in Group D tough. Nicaragua has a long history in the Baseball World Cup and it’s most recent success was a third-place finish in 1998. Saturday morning’s game between Japan and Nicaragua, two sides with quite different approaches to baseball, is a mouth-watering prospect.

In the afternoon game at 16:00 CET (15:00 BST) GB will start as favourites against Croatia – unless the hosts put on some kind of eye-popping performance against Japan this afternoon. Croatia is ranked 40th in the world compared to the European silver medallist, Great Britain, in 25th . GB is also 4-0 in previous meetings between the nations. However, the Croatians will be backed by a partisan crowd in the Zagreb stadium and GB must shake off the disappointment of today to rise to the challenge.

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