(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
  Pitcher Shuruendy Valeriano replaces Randolph Oduber on Orange-roster
Nederlands
  BOLOGNA / PARMA (Italy) -
In the upcoming Olympic Qualifying Tournament, the Netherlands Baseball Team will participate with almost the same team that captured the European title last Sunday in Bonn (Germany).
Manager Evert-Jan 't Hoen made one roster change, which was announced on Tuesday-evening (September 17).
During the European Championship last week in Germany, outfielder Randolph Oduber played briefly for the Netherlands Team.
After not having played in the first two games, he was the starting rightfielder for the Orange-squad in the third game against Sweden, but left the game in the sixth due to an injury after he had reached first base on a force play-grounder.
Oduber didn't play in the remainder of the tournament.
On the roster, Oduber is replaced by righthanded pitcher Shuruendy Valeriano, who will make his debut in the Netherlands Team.
The 21-year old Curaçao-born pitcher plays professionally in the organization of the Tampa Bay Rays since last year.
In his two professional seasons, Valeriano played in the Dominican Summer League at the Rookie League-level.
He pitched in a total of 38 games, all as reliever.
Last year, Valeriano was 6-3 with five saves and a 2.38 ERA in 18 games.
He struckout 32 batters in 34 innings.
This season, the righthander was 4-2 with four saves in 20 games.
He finished with a 3.27 ERA and struckout 44 batters in 33 innings.
On the Orange roster, there are now twelve pitchers.
This means that there now also are twelve position-players, instead of thirteen, which was the case in Germany.
The Netherlands opens the Olympic Qualifying Tournament on Wednesday (September 18) against the Czech Republic in an afternoon-game in Parma.
Games of the WBSC Baseball Europe/Africa Qualifying Event for the Games of the XXXII Olympia Tokyo 2020, which is the official name of the event, also will be played in Bologna.
The winner of the event qualifies for next years Olympic Games.
The team that finishes in second place will get another chance via a Global Qualifying Tournament, which will take place early next year.
In the following days, the Orange Team meets Israel (Thursday-evening, Parma), Spain (Friday-evening, Bologna), South Africa (Saturday-afternoon, Bologna) and Italy (Sunday-evening, Bologna).
In the provisional schedule, the top-5 teams of the European Championship, which ended on Sunday in Germany, were listed as Team 1, etc.
Italy, as the host nation, was granted the number one seed.
The other four European countries that qualified were seeds 2-5 in order of their ranking in the Championship, Netherlands (2), Spain (3), Israel (4) and the Czech Republic (5).
South Africa was seeded number six.
(September 17)
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