Croatia ends championship winless, Israel will play for 5th place
Croatia wanted to get at least one win in this tournament with their last game against Israel, but they didn’t create themselves many opportunities to score and conceded at least one run in four out of six innings on defence. For Israel there is still one game left against Belgium, which will decided whether they finish fifth or sixth.
| date: 19.07.2014 | time: 10:00 | areal: Havlíčkův Brod | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Inning | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | T | R | H | E | ||
| Croatia | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 | |||
| Israel | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 2 | ||||
| Winning Pitcher | Losing Pitcher | Umpires |
|---|---|---|
| Michael Marunov | Bruno Kukolja | Christian Singer, Benny van Nuffel, Jesper Arno |
Stream |
Play-by-play |
Onlajny.com |
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Croatia
- Balen 2B
- Hajak 1B
- Dokmanović CF
- Sket SS
- Jerbić DP
- Mandić LF
- Antolović 3B
- Kamenski RF
- Maljković C
- Kukolja P
Israel
- Ruggill CF
- Spira RF
- Yaakov SS
- Y. Rosenfeld 2B
- Scioscia 1B
- Siegel C
- Tomer DP
- Marunov P
- Brown 3B
- Roth LF
The Croats were close to score in the first inning with a runner on the third and nobody out, but Marunov handled the situation well with three strikeouts in a row. Israel on the other side took advantage of a similar situation when there were bases loaded and Marunov hit the ball. Sket caught it and went for out on third base allowing Y. Rosenfeld to get home easily.
Another point for the Israelis was scored in third inning when Ruggill occupied third base with no outs. There was a runner on first base as well and Sket decided for a double play, which they managed to get. However, Ruggill increased. In fourth inning Scioscia scored after a sacrifice hit by Tomer and Jerbic substituted Kukolja to pitch.
It looked like Croatia could bounce back in sixth, when Sket tripled and Jerbic’s grounded out let hime return home with first run for the team, but that was it and Israel replied with more runs in bottom since they load the bases with only one out. Scioscia scored on a passed ball and Kukolja returned on the board.
However, Brown singled as the next one at bat for an RBI and Spira as well later in the inning to make the difference by five points. The game finished with a runless top of the seventh inning.
Post-game comments
Vladimir Hajak (Croatia): It looked like we didn´t have a chance against their pitcher. They had a perfect defense and caught all of our possible hits. With more time, we were getting more nervous. Israel was very well prepared for us and we weren´t simply good enough.
Lukas Nejedly (Israel): I´m absolutely satisfied. After a little lack of concentration in first two innings, we didn´t give them many chances in the rest of the game, which is great. Marunov performs here brilliantly and he´s just as good as the pitchers in other teams. This win is mainly because of him. We´re not a team without pitcher any more.
