News

OTTAWA – Canada has moved up one spot from eighth to seventh in the latest installment of the International Baseball Federation’s (IBAF) World Rankings.

The move up comes after Canada finished third at the 2009 Baseball World Cup in Europe this past September, which was the first time that Canada had finished in the top three in the tournament’s history.

Also moving up was the United States, who after capturing the ’09 World Cup and the “AA”/16U World Youth Championships, have jumped from fourth to second, behind only Cuba who remains in the top spot since the rankings debuted earlier this year.

With these rankings, the IBAF also introduced several tournaments from the last four years that were not originally taken into consideration for the World Rankings. These events include continental pre-qualifying tournaments and invitational events like the “Good Luck Beijing” Baseball Tournament in 2007.  The inclusion of the new events has introduced 22 national baseball teams to the IBAF World Rankings, and all of the new tournaments meet the criteria of events which the IBAF considers for rankings points.

Overall, tournaments and championships that have been added, replaced or removed for the 19 October IBAF World Rankings include:

 Added:

·         2007 “Good Luck Beijing” Baseball Tournament,
·         2007 and 2009 Asian Baseball Cups (for 2007 and 2009 Asian Championships, respectively),
·         2006 and 2008 European Continental Qualifiers (for 2007 and 2010 European Championships)

Replaced:

·         2005 IBAF Baseball World Cup with the 2009 IBAF Baseball World Cup,
·         2005 IBAF “AA”/16U World Youth Championships with the 2009 IBAF “AA”/16U World Youth Championships

The top 25 IBAF Men’s World Rankings are listed below:

1.       Cuba
2.       United States
3.       Japan
4.       Korea
5.       Chinese Taipei
6.       Netherlands
7.       Canada
8.       Mexico
9.        Venezuela
10.   Puerto Rico
11.   Australia
12.   Italy
13.   Dominican Republic
14.   Nicaragua
15.   China
16.   Panama
17.   Spain
18.   Thailand
19.   Philippines
20.   Germany
21.   Great Britain
22.   Czech Republic
23.   South Africa
24.   Netherlands Antilles
25.   Croatia