(Story by Marco Stoovelaar)
  WBSC unveils new baseball-rankings; Netherlands in ninth place
Nederlands
 LAUSANNE (Switzerland) -
Amidst the current uncertainties, luckily many things are also continuing (which of course is a positive thing), like the unveiling of the new Baseball World Rankings by the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) on Wednesday (March 18).
The last ranking was published on December 31.
In the new ranking, the top six remains unchanged.
Japan (6167 points), the USA (4676) and South Korea (4648) are top top-3, followed by Chinese Taipei, Mexico and Australia.
On the list published in December, the Netherlands (2690 points) was in seventh place, but it dropped to ninth place in the new list published on Wednesday.
Moving ahead of the Netherlands are Cuba (8th to 7th place) and Venezuela (from 9th to 8th).
The Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico both remain in 10th and 11th place, respectively.
Panama moved from 13th to 12th place, taking the spot of Canada, which dropped from 12th to 13th.
The top-12, as ranked in the final ranking of 2022, will qualify for the Premier12 in 2023.
The places 14 through to 20 remained unchanged and are taken by Colombia, Nicaragua, the Czech Republic, Italy, Israel, Germany and Spain.
Ten European countries are listed in the top-30.
The Netherlands is the highest qualified country.
The other nine countries are the Czech Republic (16), Italy (17), Israel (18), Germany (19), Spain (20), France (25), Belgium (26), Russia (28) and Austria (29).
Also in the top-30 are six countries from Asia, five from Central America, four from South America, three from North America, one from Africa and one from Oceania.
Guam made the biggest jump on the ranking, climbing 16 spots from 52nd to 36th, while El Salvador climbed from 65th to 54th place.
In total, 86 countries are listed on the new WBSC world ranking list.
The Bahamas, Haiti and Iraq share 84th place.
New in the list is Northern Mariana Islands, which moved into 83rd place.
In the World Rankings, the National Team performaces from U-12 to Professional in WBSC-sanctioned international competitions are measured over a four-year period.
The current list is updated with the recent results of the Americas Qualifier for the WBSC U-23 Baseball World Cup 2020 and the Oceania Qualifier for the WBSC U-15 Baseball World Cup 2020.
These events were won by Nicaragua and Guam, respectively.
At the moment, the U-15 World Cup is scheduled for August 14-23 in Mexico, while the U-23 World Cup is scheduled for October 2-11, also in Mexico.
No new World Rankings have been released yet in Women's Softball, Men's Softball and Women's Baseball.
The latest lists were published in December.
The Netherlands is ninth in women's softball, sixteenth in men's softball and eleventh in women's baseball.
The USA heads in women's softball, while Japan is ranked first in men's softball and women's baseball.
(March 18)
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