Moreover, I am one of those people that could watch countries compete in anything. I am that guy that got wrapped up in U.S.A curling during the last Olympics. Heck, I even looked for the closest curling rink to me home. If you live on the tri-state area, the answer to that question can be found here . How could you not be excited by something called the Nutmeg Curling Club? But I digress. The biggest concern among teams during the last WBC was the health of their players, specifically their pitchers. This year, the list of pitchers who are pulling out of the tournament is growing by the day, and the list of position players who declined is significant as well. Now, knowing this, MLB should be doing everything possible to assuage and ensure teams that the tournament is as player friendly as possible, and as protective as it could possibly be. It would stand to reason that as time on the field increases, so does the chance of being injured. So, MLB should be seeking to limit the number of games required as well as establishing pitch counts, etc.

Instead, MLB has come up with an asinine schedule that can only best be explained by showing the diagram they designed to do so:

Now, to keep things from getting too complicated and avoid probability math, let’s just play out an example. Suppose U.S.A beats Canada, Venezuela beats Italy, then the U.S.A beats Venezuela. The U.S.A has now qualified. Let’s then assume that Venezuela beats the winner of Italy/Canada, clinching qualification for Venezuela as well. Here is where it gets stupid. U.S.A and Venezuela now have to play each other just to determine who wins and who loses, even though both teams move on to the same bracket in Round 2. It is a useless game that means nothing, but will require teams to use players nonetheless. Moreover, teams won’t want to use any premier pitchers, so they will almost be encouraged to max out the pitch counts on the guys that do pitch.

Now, I know what you are thinking, this is bad enough; but it gets worse. When you look at that schedule, that means that in each bracket, one team that advances is guaranteed to have to play 4 games, while the other team will have played 3. To top it all off, they repeat the same insanity in round two. If you want to protect players, ensure that they play less games…not more.

The way to solve this problem is to utilize a simple round-robin format where each team plays every other team once, for a total of three games each round. This is what they did in 2006, and this is what the World Cup has utilized for decades. Sure, some games would be meaningless, but some of those third games would be very important (as they were last time for the U.S.A in both rounds 1 & 2). More importantly no team would have to play four games to advance. I would have to imagine that they moved to this new format to ensure that tiebreakers aren’t needed and that advancement is settled on the field. I just think it is at the expense of the players and increases the chance of injury (whatever that chance may be). Someone from MLB would have to be awfully persuasive to convince me that this is better.

The scandal came to a head on October 8th when prosecutors in Tiawan detained six members of the Dmedia sponsored T-Rex team including the CEO Shih Jian-hsin, general manager, three players a player/coach, their manager, as well as four bookies. They’re being charged with crimes relating to ten fixed games dating back to March of 2008. The player/coach is a pitcher and the teams hitting coach, Cory Bailey, a U.S. citizen and former Major League Baseball player.

Additionally, the prosecutor’s office has reported that the executive director of the T-Rex team, Shih Chien-hsin, has confessed to what many had already believed, that the team executives were in collusion with a ring of mobsters who were actually running the team, and organizing the match-fixing.

Since they’re arrests, all six members of T-Rex have been fired from the team and can never be re-hired since they’ve been involved with match-fixing, by CPBL (Chinese Professional Baseball League) rules. After being released, Cory Baily allegedly returned/fled back to the United States. And although his representatives have claimed that he will return to Taiwan to face prosecution when the time comes, the authorities are much less optimistic that they will ever see him on Taiwanese soil again. Baily has repeatedly denied any involvement in the scandal. He has cited the importance of honor to himself and his family for why he would never involve himself in something like this and has said that the press reports that he confessed to his involvement in the scandal are false. Several of the players, fearing retaliation from the mob have had to video tape their deposition and entered into protective custody.

In an attempt to maintain what little integrity is left for the league, CPBL officials have repeatedly apologized to fans, banned Baily, players Chen Ke-fan, Chen Yuan-chia and manager Wu Chao-hui from the league, suspended the Dmedia T-Rex team and canceled all of their remaining games. Formally expelling the team on October 23rd.

Prior to this year, T-Rex was known as Macoto Cobras, but was renamed after it was purchased by Dmedia Corporation. When the CEO purchased the Cobras in 2007, he allegedly financed the team with help from gangs and money launderers. Not surprising the anyone other than perhaps the CEO, the gangs then used their financial leverage to control the team and players to make huge gambling profits.

With the team suspension, the league has been reduced from six to five teams for this year. And it is unlikely that will change next year as it will be nearly impossible for T-Rex to get another sponsor while everyone associated with the team scrambles to distance themselves.

Compounding this nightmarish situation is the fact that this has happened before. Back in 1996 another game-fixing scandal broke out and was so perverse that the league was forced to disband the China Times Eagles. Hopefully this will be the last time they have to clean up a mess of this magnitude. Because as the crowds in the stadiums and viewers at home continue to dwindle, the next scandal could mean the end of the league.