The Premier12 will return for the first time in five years in 2019.

The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) announced today (Nov. 12) that the WBSC Premier12, the most important international baseball tournament, will take place from Nov. 10-24 next year. The Premier12 is a quadrennial event, with the first edition in 2015 and two editions in 2019, but it will be the first time in five years that it has been held due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced the postponement of major events such as the Tokyo Olympics, World Baseball Classic (WBC) and Hangzhou Asian Games.

The Premier12 will feature the top 12 nations in the WBSC World Rankings at the end of 2023. Six teams will compete in two groups, with the top two teams from each group advancing to the Super Round. The first- and second-place finishers from the Super Rounds will compete in the final, while the third- and fourth-place finishers will play for the bronze medal.

Group A matches will take place from November 10-14 in the United States, while Group B will take place from November 14-18 in Taiwan. The opening game will be held on November 13 at the Nagoya Dome in Japan. From November 21-23, the Super Rounds will take place at the Tokyo Dome in Japan, with the final and bronze medal match on November 24.소닉카지노

Korea Baseball Team lost both games of the 2019 Premier12 Korea-Japan series / Photo by Newsis

South Korea’s national baseball team has suffered a string of international humiliations in recent years after finishing as runners-up at the 2019 Premier12 tournament. They finished fourth at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics and came home empty-handed without a medal, and at the WBC in March this year, they had to deal with a shocking first-round exit.

The loss to South Korea was even more stinging in the face of their poor performance. South Korea faced Japan twice in the 2019 Premier12 and tasted defeat in both games (8-10 in the Super Round and 3-5 in the final). At the Tokyo Olympics, they tried for redemption, but instead of the promised eight games, they suffered a nightmare eight games and lost again, 2-5. They followed that up with a shocking 4-13 loss at the WBC, where they only escaped with a cold game.

South Korea has good memories of the last two Premier12 tournaments. In the inaugural tournament in 2015, Korea rallied from a 0-3 deficit in the bottom of the eighth inning to win 4-3 in the top of the ninth in the semifinal against Japan, and then went on to win the inaugural title with an 8-0 victory over the United States in the final. In the second edition of the tournament in 2019, the team finished as runners-up, albeit to Japan, which wasn’t a bad result. However, a persistent generation gap ultimately hindered the team’s success at the Olympics and WBC.

The Korean national baseball team will begin its generational transition at the upcoming Hangzhou Asian Games. It will be interesting to see if the Korean baseball team can successfully undergo a generational change and avenge its humiliation at the Premier 12 next November.