Cuba is facing a decade with more defeats than victories in international tournaments
14ymedio/Swing Completo, Havana, 28 November 2024 — Team Cuba will close 2024 close to its worst position in history in the international baseball rankings. The island dropped one step in the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) ranking, published this Wednesday, and is in tenth position, just one step away from its worst record – 11th place – in 2021.
The Cuban team generated the fewest points during 2024 within the top 10 of the world ranking. The team could only add 401 points, far from the second worst team in the year, the Dominican Republic, with 760. For the classification, what was achieved in the lower categories is also taken into account, where there were also no great results.
The Cuban team generated the fewest points during 2024 within the top 10 of the world ranking.
Poor performance has also caused Team Cuba to fall even at the regional level, although in 2012 it was the world leader in the rankings. Today it is ranked sixth in the Americas, behind Venezuela, which is now third in the world, with 4,846 points.
Also on the list are Mexico (4,729), the United States (4,691) and Panama (3,334). Japan is firmly at the top of the World Baseball Softball Confederation rankings, despite losing to Taiwan in the final of the last Premier 12. It has 6,866 points, well ahead of the Taiwanese, who are in second place, with 5,489.
Cuba’s poor results in international tournaments have been a constant for a decade. Its record in 2013, after playing in the World Classic, was the last time the team had more wins than losses in a year, winning four games and losing only two.
During the 2015 Premier 12, the Cubans qualified in the second round, where they fell to South Korea. Thus they closed that year with a 3-3 record. Two years later, in 2017, they again played in the World Classic. In that tournament, they reached the second phase of the event, where they fell by a thrashing (14-1) to the Netherlands. With that defeat, their record was 2-4. That has been, so far, the worst performance for Cuba in that tournament; in 2006 they were finalists.
During the 2015 Premier 12, the Cubans qualified in the second round, where they fell to South Korea.
In 2019, in the second edition of the Premier 12, the island was eliminated for the first time in the group stage. It finished in tenth place overall, with one win and two losses. That same year, the team competed in the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru. The competition, which Team Cuba dominated throughout history – with 12 titles, 10 of them consecutive, from 1971 to 2007 – ended with three losses in four matches and the team remained in third-to-last place. At the end of the year, its record was 2-5.
Two years later, the 2021 Pre-Olympic tournament was held, on the way to the Tokyo Games, another event in which the Cuban teams had shown superiority, with three gold medals out of a possible five. Only on a couple of occasions did they have to settle for silver. However, those hopes of recalling old glories did not come true, since they did not get the ticket. That year they won one game and lost two.
The year 2023 was bittersweet. On the one hand, the team reached the semifinals of the World Classic and qualified for the second round of the championship with a 2-2 record. In the quarterfinals, they defeated Australia in a tight match (4-3), but then lost to the United States in the semifinals (14-2). Despite the positive scenario, the record in the tournament was three wins and three losses. That same year, they played in the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games and were eliminated in the first phase. They were only able to win one game out of four to end the year with four wins and six losses.
Finally, in 2024, they played five games, all within the framework of the Premier 12, with one victory and four defeats, leaving a total record of 13 games won and 24 lost in more than a decade.
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