Japan, Cuba to square off on first day of 2017 WBC

Japan’s quest to recapture the title at next March’s World Baseball Classic will begin against Cuba at Tokyo Dome.

Two-time WBC champion Japan will face the baseball powerhouse from the Caribbean on the first day of the March 7-11 first round, then take on Australia and China on March 8 and 9, respectively.

Japan, which won the 2006 and 2009 WBC titles, is assigned to Pool A with the other aforementioned countries for the opening round. Gecheok Sky Dome in Seoul (Pool B), Marlins Park in Miami (Pool C), and Estadio Charros de Jalisco in Guadalajara (Pool D) are the other first-round sites.

The top two teams in each group will advance to the second round in Tokyo and San Diego. The Pool A teams will compete in the same group with Pool B teams in the second round at the Big Egg between March 12 and 16. The San Diego pool will be played from March 14-18 at Petco Park.

The first two rounds will feature a round-robin system (the tournament used a double-elimination system during the 2013 tournament). If teams are tied, they will __play a playoff contest on the final scheduled day of each round.

The two pairs of teams in each second-round pool will meet at Dodger Stadium, the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers, for the knockout final round, which is scheduled for March 20-22.

“Now we know who we are going to __play (on what dates),” Japan manager Hiroki Kokubo said at a news conference before Thursday’s exhibition game against Mexico at Tokyo Dome. “So it’s going to be easier for us to prepare for the competition.”

Kokubo added that the first game of the tournament would be difficult any way, no matter who his team faces. Japan will have tuneup games against the Hanshin Tigers and Orix Buffaloes on March 3 and 5, respectively, at Kyocera Dome, after a training camp, and the skipper said that his squad would need to get ready for the opening round by taking advantage of the exhibition games for preparation.

“We’ll assemble in mid-February (for a training camp) and including how we are going to tune up our pitchers, our preparation for the first game is going to be important.”

There’s only one day between the two Tokyo rounds, so how Kokubo and Samurai Japan manage their pitchers could be a key factor for the team.

“We haven’t really decided on how we’ll use our pitchers (in the WBC) yet,” Kokubo said. “But it’ll probably be hard for us to rotate our starting pitchers with four days’ rest (because of the tight schedule). So we think we are going to need at least eight pitchers that can be starters.”