Kingsley Collins

2 November 2015

 

With the World Series decided – and with Kansas City Royals rightly in celebratory mode after snagging their first title in thirty years – the baseball attentions of many have begun to focus on the Premier 12 tournament that will commence in Japan on Sunday 8 November.

 

A prestigious new fixture that has effectively replaced the World Cup and the Olympics baseball programme – for the time being at least – the Premier 12 has attracted twelve baseball superpowers to a financially lucrative series that will be co-hosted by Japan and Chinese Taipei.

 

While Australia failed to qualify for the event, our administrators will surely be following the series closely and devising strategies that may enhance our competitiveness in qualifying for future marquee events at international level.  

 

Unfortunately for us, Australia did not qualify for the Premier 12 under IBAF world rankings, which currently have us at fourteen, just a handful of points shy of Panama (thirteen), Mexico (twelve) and Italy (eleven). While there is nothing that we can now do about it, there are legitimate concerns being raised about IBAF ranking procedures, including the provision of points through local, sometimes even weekend tournaments – especially in Europe and Central America.

 

Those concerns should be addressed – and they need to be, if there is any perception that Australia is being disadvantaged by either external or internal factors. Perhaps both.

 

And there is the reasonable and legitimate query about whether Australia has improved or declined at international level since we snatched a silver medal at the 2004 Olympics.

 

For now, though, Australian baseball will look on with interest as twelve nations compete in an inaugural Premier 12 tournament that will cover all organisational and team costs while offering nearly four million US dollars in prize money – aside from the potential prestige and the augmented IBAF world ranking points that are there to be accrued.

 

The winner of the Premier 12 will receive a purse of one million United States dollars, while second placing will earn $ 600,000, third placing $ 400,000 and fourth placing $ 300,000. Teams placed fifth through to eighth will earn a cool $ 225,000 apiece and ninth to twelfth placing will carry away better than chump change in the order of $ 150,000 each.

 

While the prize money to be split between players, coaches and staff may pale into relative insignificance compared with many of the salaries at Major League level, we need to place this in a context.

 

It is now clear that the Premier 12 will not be attracting the very best professional players in the baseball world. The American team, for example, will include no current players on forty-man MLB rosters. That rules out United States MLB nationals, along with dozens - perhaps up to a couple of hundred – of central Americans who theoretically might have been selected in sides representing Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Venezuela and Dominican Republic.

 

However, like the Olympics Games in other eras, we can expect that teams representing their various countries will be selecting – if they can - former Major Leaguers and emerging Minor League prospects to field their strongest squads possible.

 

And we can certainly expect that the Asian countries will draw upon their burgeoning talent base to make a real impact on a Premier 12 series that will receive enormous coverage across the baseball world.