Italy
While team captain Davide Dallospedale and a dozen players miss the European Championship, Italy is still one of the strongest teams in the tournament and hope to erase memories of the seventh-place finish in Barcelona. Marco Mazzieri surprisingly cut Sandy Patrone after the successful Italian Baseball Week and hopes that Tiago Da Silva, Riccardo De Santis, Chris Di Roma, Cody Cillo and Chris Cooper will lead the pitching staff instead. Mario Chiarini, Giuseppe Mazzanti and Laidel Chapelli impressed during training camp. Shortstop Tony Granato received an Italian passport right in time for the European Championship. And obviously Stuttgart, Heidenheim and Neuenburg is pretty excited that Mike Piazza will serve as hitting coach.
Spain
While head coach Mauro Mazzotti will miss last year’s World Cup heroes Paco and Daniel Figueroa as well as Eric Gonzalez, they are still the main opponent for the Italy in pursuit of first place in this pool. Remigio Leal is still on the team, leading the pitching staff besides Manu Olivera, Pedro Belmonte and Ivan Granados. Richard Montiel, Dewis Navarro and Luis Perez will form the heart of the order with Emmanuel Febles leading off.
Great Britain
Great Britain is trying to defend a second place from Barcelona 2007. New head coach Pat Doyle relies on players from North America, Australia and Europe, including a bunch of former pros including Aaron Hornostaj and Mitch Evans who also serves as assistant coach. Henry Collins, Brian Essery, Ted Gieschen, Jeff Mottl and Alex Smith probably shoulder most of the work load on the mound.
Greece
Nobody really knows what to expect from the Greek team. They stunned everyone with a silver medal in 2003, but had to settle for ninth in 2005 and didn’t even qualify for 2007. Former big leaguer Erik Pappas and Chris Demetral who looks back at over 1,000 minor league games still lead the team and hope for another surprise. But since they didn’t played any exhibition games we have to wait how good they really are.
Sweden
Sweden lost all three games at last year’s Baseball World Cup and it didn’t look much better at the Italian Baseball Week. However they used the tournament mainly as training camp to determine a starting lineup and Adam Sorgi wasn’t there yet, but still arriving right in time for the opener against Greece. Joakim Claesson, Nick Soubiea, Curtis Dionne will be the main guys on the pitching staff. Sorgi, Tony Dermendziev and Peter Johannessen are supposed to provide the run support.
Croatia
Croatia is still in a rebuilding mode and struggled a bit at the Prague Baseball Week in preparation of the European Championship. But with Jimmy Summers, Ernesto Pereira, Michael Lennox, Jason Pospishil, Bobo Gales and Benjamin Goldstrom on the team, they are still dangerous enough to be on a same level as Sweden, Greece and Great Britain in this group. Nonetheless it will be difficult for them to advance to the final round for the first time.