GIJANG, South Korea – Austin Gomm (Mississauga, ON) and TJ Schofield-Sam (Brampton, ON) each drove in four runs as Canada’s Junior National Team recorded a 17-3 win over China to open the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) U-18 Baseball World Cup.
The game was declared official after seven innings due to the ten-run mercy rule.
“We did what we needed to do today (to win),” said Manager Greg Hamilton. “Mitch (Bratt) settled in on the mound and the offence gave him a chance to settle in which is what you want in these games - you want your offence to take over and they did a great job.”
Starting pitcher Mitch Bratt (Newmarket, ON) worked five and two thirds innings on the mound and struck out five to earn the win before giving way to Justin Thorsteinson (Langley, BC) and Jack Seward (Port Moody, BC) who recorded the final four outs.
Canada opened the scoring with a five-run second inning highlighted by back-to-back run scoring doubles from Gomm and Raphaël Pelletier (Mascouche, QC) while Micah McDowell (Coldbrook, NS) came up with a sacrifice fly to score one run, and TJ Schofield-Sam (Brampton, ON) contributed a RBI single.
China responded with three runs in the top half of the fourth but Canada answered back with four runs in the bottom of the inning before putting across eight runs in the fifth highlighted by a Dasan Brown (Oakville, ON) two-run double off the wall in centerfield and Gomm’s triple with the bases loaded.
Schofield-Sam’s four hits led a Canadian offence that had thirteen on the game as eight players recorded one hit with all nine batters in the starting lineup scoring at least one run.
Canada will now focus its attention on a match-up with the Netherlands scheduled for Saturday, August 31st with the first pitch at 2:30AM ET.
“We’ve got to take care of our game (tomorrow) and play well,” added Hamilton. “If we pitch honest and take care of plays on defense we’ve got enough dimension on offence to score some runs.”
HOW TO FOLLOW
All 50 games of the WBSC U-18 Baseball World Cup will be streamed live at: youtube.com/wbsc.
