It’s happened. China defeated Japan.
China defeated Japan 1-0 in a Group A baseball game at the Hangzhou 2022 Asian Games on Oct. 3 at the Shaoxing Baseball and Softball Sports Center 1 in Zhejiang, China.
China scored the first run in the top of the second inning on an infield single by Cao Ze, a walk by Lu Yun, a sacrifice bunt by Yang Jin, and a single by Dunan, and held on for the win when Liang Fei hit an RBI single to left field. More than anything, Japan’s inability to capitalize on its chances in the ninth inning, when it stranded the bases loaded with nobody out and two outs, was painful.
The unexpected turn of events made for a weird game. No one had calculated that Japan would lose to China.
However, this situation has made Korea’s chances of reaching the final even better than before, assuming they beat both China and Japan. The prerequisite is for Taiwan to beat China.
If Taiwan beats China, the rest of the results are moot. Based on their performance so far, Taiwan, with seven American minor leaguers, is a step above China.
With the political situation in China, there’s no reason for the Chinese to cut them any slack, so a two-game sweep would mean that their chances of making the finals just got a little bit better.
However, if that outcome doesn’t happen and Taiwan gets caught by China, we could have a weird situation where all three teams bite off more than they can chew. Or, if Taiwan wins all three games and we go 1-1, we could have a weird situation where all three teams go 1-2.
For example, if South Korea beats China and loses to Japan, they will be 1-2. If China loses to both South Korea and Taiwan, they would be 1-2. If Japan beats Korea and loses to Taiwan, they would be 1-2. The math is complicated by the fact that this is a scenario that could certainly happen in the Super Round. However, it’s definitely a good thing for South Korea to have the option of making it to the finals even if the worst-case scenario is a 1-1 tie.
In matches between tied teams, the winner is the winning team, and in the event of a bite-off, a metric called Team’s Quality Balance (TQB) is calculated in matches between tied teams. TQB follows the formula: (runs scored/offensive innings)-(runs allowed/defensive innings).
South Korea will also have to adjust their pitching rotation due to the change in schedule. At the beginning of the tournament, South Korea was preparing with Japan 스포츠토토 as the top seed in Group A and China as the second seed. However, due to the schedule change, Korea will now play Korea-Japan at 1 p.m. on Oct. 5.
The final Super Round schedule for Korea is October 5 at 1 p.m. against Korea and October 6 at 1 p.m. against China.