Chinese-Taipei shuts down Canada with solid pitching

Canada’s Cinderalla story has come to an unhappy ending at the World Junior Baseball Championship in Thunder Bay.

With 5,000 or so fans looking on, Chinese-Taipei plated a pair of runs in the seventh inning of Saturday’s semifinal to knock off the host country 3-1 and earn a berth in Sunday’s gold medal game against Australia.

Canada, instead, will fight for bronze against a Cuban team that beat them 3-0 during round-robin play.

Out-hit 10-3, manager Greg Hamilton said his troops simply couldn’t master the pitching of Lo Kuo Hua, who went the distance, striking out 10, the only run he allowed coming in the fourth when Dalton Pompey’s fielder’s choice proved enough to score Alex Calbick from third.

“Their guy on the mound was outstanding,” Hamilton said. “You tip your caps sometimes. We had one kick at him and we couldn’t get him. What it really came down to was he was real good.”

The Canadian's best opportunity, other than the run they scored, came in the eighth, trailing by a pair.

Rowan Wick, the two-homer hero against Italy the night before, doubled to start the inning. Justin Atkinson followed with a walk. Hamilton pored over his stats and then called on Emmanuel Forcier to move them over.

But after pulling back from two bunt attempts and working a 2-0 count on a struggling Hua, Canada left the bunt sign on. Forcier laid down a perfect sacrifice, moving the runners, but gave up an out.

Calbick, who took over the lead-off spot for Canada, struck out and then Brandon Dailey was walked intentionally to load the bases for two-time hero Dalton Pompey. This time fate was against the Toronto Blue Jays draft pick and a ground ball to third made easy work of Dailey at second.

The loss was a devastating one, said a disheartened Kellin Deglan, choking back tears during the post-game scrum with media.

“Their pitcher threw a really good game,” he said, stepping back to regroup his thoughts.

Regrouping is exactly what the team plans to do on Sunday the Canadian catcher added, aware the Cubans don’t like to lose and have that much more reason to win having lost a title they felt already belonged to them.

“We should be all right. We’ve got some pitching left. We’ve got (Tom) Robson who will probably go tomorrow. We’ll be ready for tomorrow, so we’ll come out hard and play a good game.”

A shot at gold just wasn’t meant to be, said DH Philip Diedrick, who leads Canada with 10 RBI during the world juniors.

“We had our chance late in the eighth inning, but we kind of blew it, so there was nothing we could do about it,” said Diedrick, who authored an 0-for-3 night at the plate.

“It just comes down to (Hua) made his pitches and we didn’t really adjust to the curveball he was throwing. Unless you adjust to it, that’s the way things are going to turn out.”

Like Australian James Murphy earlier, Hua was perfect through three, but ran into trouble in the fourth when Calbick doubled and Dailey singled, leading to the game’s first run. But with runners on first and second, Diedrick hit into an inning-ending double play.

Chinese-Taipei evened it up in the fifth, manufacturing a run when No. 9 hitter Ou Ya-Tsung walked off Canadian starter Evan Grills and stole second, then scored on Lin-Tzu Wei’s single, his second of four hits on the day.

Grills was equally effective in five innings of work, allowing just three hits and one run before giving way in favour of Mike Ellis.

Canada avoided further trouble in the sixth, thanks to some brilliant defensive work by Deglan. Back-to-back singles had Chinese-Taipei runners on first and second. Lin-Chih Hsien followed with a single of his own to load the bases, but Ko-Chih Wei was nailed at the plate when Deglan blocked his access and laid the tag after a perfect throw from Calbick. Deglan then nailed Yang-Hong Sheng trying to steal third, deflating the threat.

The Chinese-Taipei team took its first lead in the seventh off Ellis, who would be saddled with the loss, giving up a pair of unearned runs.

Lin-Chia Ching reached on a one-out error by Atkinson and rounded third and scored on Lin Ting-Yen’s double down the left-field line.

“I was very happy, I was very excited,” Ching said through an interpreter. “I was very nervous.”

Wei, who is hitting .607 for the tournament, said he’s told his teammates not to put too much pressure on themselves heading into the gold medal game.

Win or lose, they’ve already achieved the goal they set out for themselves, he said.

“If we can win a championship, that’s good,” he said through an interpreter. “But if unfortunately we lost, I told them to let it go, not think too much.”

Game time Sunday night at Port Arthur Stadium is 4:30 p.m. Canada and Cuba will play for bronze at noon.