WBC (World Baseball Classic) Group B dark horse, to which Korea belongs, is the Czech Republic, not Australia?

On the 9th (Korean time), the day before the announcement of the final list of the 20 countries participating in the WBC finals, MLB Network selected ‘dark horses’ that can achieve better results than expected in each group from Groups A to D. In Group B, an unexpected team was mentioned. The Czech Republic, not Australia, was chosen as the candidate to achieve unexpected results.

Reporter John Paul Morosi picked the Czech Republic as the dark horse when it was Group B’s turn, saying, “Here is the team I look forward to the most.” The Czech Republic is a European baseball powerhouse, ranked 15th in the WBSC (World Baseball Softball Confederation) men’s baseball rankings. It is the second highest ranking in Europe after the Netherlands, which ranks seventh in the world.

In the qualifying round held in Germany last September, he defeated France, Germany and Spain to advance to the WBC finals for the first time in Czech history. Their process of advancing to the finals was made into a documentary called ‘Small Country, Big Dream’ produced by the WBC.

Reporter Morosi said, “The team I’m looking forward to is the Czech Republic, a team that has passed the preliminary round. The Czech Republic has Arizona prospect Boris Vezelka and a catcher with minor league experience in Martin Servenka. Servenka is based on his professional baseball career. I will lead the team,” 메이저놀이터

Servenka went through Cleveland, San Francisco and Baltimore and continued his challenge to the major leagues with the Mets until just two years ago. In 2019 and 2020, he also appeared in major league spring camp exhibition games.

However, in 2021, he was released after the season ended with a batting average of 0.183 in 72 games on the Triple-A team under the Mets. He now plays for the Czech Extraliga Prague Eagles while working as a salesperson.

Meanwhile, reporter Morosi picked Panama as the dark horse in Group A. Panama, which advanced to the finals through the preliminaries, has a lot of major league career players such as Christian Betancourt from NC, so it has the power to stand out in Group A, where no special strong team is seen. Also, Colombia in Group C and Nicaragua in Group D were classified as teams to watch.