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World Softball Championships: July 11 and 12 roundup

Jul 12, 2018 | 5:43 PM

As Canada gets set to face Hong Kong at 8 p.m. tonight, action at the WBSC Jr Men’s World Softball Championships continued on at Prime Minister’s Park.

July 11 roundup

Japan (5-0) shutout India 12-0 as Taiga Onishi threw a no-hit gem with home run support from Hiroshi Sakata and Shoki Matsuo. Matsuo is the tournament’s hits leader (11) and sporting a whopping .688 average. He also leads in runs batted in (11) and triples (3).

Japanese bats lead the tournament in home runs at 10 and in hitting average at .420, a full 15 points ahead of the next best Australians.

India (2-3) would later come alive as the team would on to beat Denmark (0-6) by a score of 9-2.

Team Australia (5-0) hammered the South African’s (1-4) with a 7 run second inning and won their game 17-1 in five innings. The game was slightly delayed due to the weather conditions.

Aussie pitching has been stellar throughout the tournament so far; their throwers have yet to allow a home run and the team sports a 1.00 earned run average over 5 games.

The day’s premier match featured a close game between the teams from Argentina (3-2) and Mexico (2-3).

Mexico fought right to the end, however they were unable to overcome Juan Jose Pepe, who threw for 14 strikeouts in relief as he and the Argentineans held on for the win.

Team Argentina leads the tournaments in strikeouts at 65, well ahead of the next closest team.

Final day of Round Robin

July 12 marks the end of round robin action for the Jr. Men’s Softball Championships.

Argentina concluded their round action play against India at 12:30 and the South African’s squared off against Mexico at 3:00 p.m.

The Argentineans improved their record to 4-2 after beating the team from India 9-0. The Argentine pitchers allowed just four Indian players on base in the shutout win.

Mexico played South Africa in the afternoon game; Mexico clobbered the South African’s 9-1, scoring all of their runs in the first two innings and improving their record to 3-3.

The evening lineup features four games.

Guatemala (1-3) and the team from New Zealand (3-1) kick things off at 5:00 p.m., followed by team Australia and Japan who meet for the first time at 5:30 p.m.

The United States (2-2) play against the team from Czech Republic (2-2) at 7:30, and Team Canada (5-0) looks to stay perfect against the team from Hong Kong (0-4) in the last match of the day at 8:00 p.m.

 

Bryan.Eneas@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @BryanEneas