EuroBaseball 2025: The Definitive Pool Stage Guide & What’s Next in the Championship -

All 16 teams have finished their round-robin games, so let’s take a look at the current picture.

Just a reminder, Groups A & B are the main seeded teams, and all eight teams are still in the competition. Groups C & D are the qualification groups, so only the top two are still live; the bottom two in each group will fight another day.

Croatia dismissed Hungary with a mercy rule win (10 run difference after seven innings) in their first outing, and then hit winning runs in the ninth inning against Austria, and a three-run, tenth inning walk-off against Belgium.

The indomitable Croats are rewarded with an intriguing tie against Sweden, with the winners heading for a sellout at the Neptunus Stadium against the Dutch at primetime on Thursday evening.

Although Belgium must rue the walk-off loss in the final game, I don’t think the result would have changed their position in the group. They simply allowed too many runs. The game against Hungary is a prime example, with the Belgians winning 19-9. Yes, it is another mercy rule win, but Croatia beat Hungary 10-1, and Austria demolished Hungary 26-2, so Belgium conceding nine runs against Hungary devastated their chances in the competition

Want to know how a 26-2 score is possible with the mercy rule in action? Austria was already 16-2 up when they entered the fifth, which is the first inning that the mercy rule can take effect. They then scored ten more, just to be safe.

Austria started the tournament with seven runs in two innings against the hosts, Belgium, at the Borgerhout Squirrels Field, near Antwerp. They scored another seven runs in the eighth inning, giving an easy start to the competition and paving the way to Rotterdam.

The prize for Austria is to face the third-placed team in Pool A, who unfortunately for the Austria team is Spain, the reigning European Champions. The winners of this “crossover playoff” game will meet Great Britain at midday* UK time on Thursday 25 September.

* Watch out for weather-impacted time changes to the schedule.

An Italian journalist told me that the Italian team was too young and too inexperienced to do well. I recall Alan Hansen saying something similar about Manchester United before Beckham and co won the Double.

In the opening group game, Italy’s bats destroyed the eventual second-place team Switzerland 18-0, thanks to a 13-run first inning. Switzerland’s starter, Andrea Girasole (who coincidentally is the president of the Swiss Baseball and Softball Federation), allowed five earned runs without recording an out, and was replaced by Simon Steffen who gave up seven earned runs without recording an out.

The Swiss bats woke in their second game, with a 12-8 win over Greece to keep their qualification hopes alive. Undoubtedly, Switzerland, Greece and Lithuania did not share the Italian journalist’s pessimism, and had always expected to be fighting for the solitary spot in second place behind WBC-destined Italy.

Italy demolished Lithuania in their second game by a score of 16-0. This was notable for the four scoreless innings tossed by Mattia Aldegheri, older brother of the Los Angeles Angels’ starter, Sam Aldegheri, who became the first Italian born and bred player to play in MLB.

Switzerland secured their road to Rotterdam with a rain-affected 13-5 win over Lithuania. The Swiss take their negative run differential to face Israel on Wednesday, with the winner progressing to face Czechia on Thursday.

My main focus on Wednesday will be on the tasty matchup between Italy, winners of Group C, and France, fourth in GB’s Group B. The winner will take on Germany in the Quarter Final, while the loser will be relegated to the qualification groups for the next European Championship. An indignity that neither nation wants.

Sweden has only managed to score three runs during the week, so they head into the “crossover playoff” against the undefeated Croatian team with one more chance to keep their tournament alive.

I tagged the GB group as the Cliche Group of Death, but the sage-like CJ from Ministry of Baseball suggested it was more appropriate for Group A. The three-way tie between Germany, Czechia and Spain suggests he was correct.

Spain is the current European Champions, having beaten Great Britain in the final of the 2023 tournament in Brno, Czechia. They are an all-or-nothing team. I have watched all of their games and I can’t remember many pitches that their hitters didn’t like the look of swinging at. In the case of the 15-0 whitewash of Sweden, it worked in their favour, but they were humbled by the discipline of the Czechia team that took them down 9-1.

Side note: A charismatic, athletic chap was brewing a new pot of coffee in the room where we type up these reports. An official said to him that they had people for that, but he joked that he was happy to help out as he was one of team.

We chatted about the game the night before – Spain v Czechia – I opined that Spain was dreadful; swinging and missing at everything.

I couldn’t place him, but suspected he was an ambassador for the sport or an ex-player brought in for publicity. I asked what his role was this week.

“Oh, I’m the hitting coach for Spain”

I apologised for my comments, and he graciously agreed that there were many poor decisions by the hitters. I took the coffee he had made me, and Googled “Spanish Hitting Coach” as I walked to towards the field.

Five-time All-Star, four-time Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, 282 home runs over 7009 at-bats for a 32.5 WAR. And Adam Jones was just about the nicest guy you could ever meet. It’s funny, I’m writing about it here, yet he probably forgot about the interaction before he even finished his coffee.

Pre-tournament, I tipped Czechia and Spain to top the group, so Germany’s 9-1 win over Czechia was a bit of a surprised, although none of the German team who are staying in the same budget hotel as me, thought it was anything other than expected.

With Spain thumping Sweden 15-0 in the first game, it looked like Czechia would struggle to make it to the Quarter Finals. But anyone can beat anyone else in these one-off games. Spain beat Germany, Germany beat Czechia, Czechia beat Spain.

To be honest, I thought Spain had done enough to finish ahead of Germany in the three-way tie. They scored more runs than Germany, they had a better run differential than Germany, and they had beaten Germany in the head-to-head matchup.

Although, as the table below shows, as soon as you take games against Sweden out of the equation, Czechia and Germany thoroughly deserve their automatic qualification spots.

So, this means that Spain face the high-scoring Austrians on Wednesday 24 September. Although you would imagine that Austria has not faced pitchers with such experience – looking at you Fernando Baez and Rhiner Cruz.

And so to Great Britain’s group, which played out pretty much as expected, although I would not have been surprised if France had beaten GB to make it three teams with one win. Had France won 9-4 against GB to force a three way tie, then Great Britain would still have finished second due to the superior runs scored (and run differential).

The Dutch look dominant and are living up to their billing as pre-tournament favourites. Just with the eye-test, the power of Jonathan and Sharlon Schoop, Jeremi Profar, Hendrik Clementina, and Eugene Helder looks significantly greater than the opponents hitters, whose flyballs fall short of the fence. And then add Didi Gregorius, probably the best player in the tournament, into the mix, and it will take something special to defeat the Dutch.

The host will play all of their remaining games in the primetime 7:30pm slot in front of a sellout crowd of the orange army.

The Netherlands will face the winner of the Italy v France matchup in must-watch event on Thursday evening. Ahead of that Great Britain will have played their Quarter Final – midday on Thursday 25 September – against the winner of the Spain v Austria clash.

Top performers

The extreme results against Hungary and Lithuania distort the stats of the Pool C and D players, so with the greatest respect to Elias Kreskas (8 runs) or Giaconino Lasaracina (4 HR, 12 RBI), I am excluding Austrian, Italian, and other Pool C & D players from this table.

Top run scorer: 6 – Jonathan Schoop (Netherlands)
Most home runs: 2 – Yannic Walther (Germany)
Most hits: 10 – Julian Sanders (Great Britain)
Best average (min 3 games): .714 – Julian Sanders (Great Britain)
Best on-base percentage (min 3 games): .857 – Julian Sanders (Great Britain)
Most stolen bases: 2 – Alexander Schmidt (Germany) and Darrion Richards (Germany)
Most strikeouts: 10 – Cristian Pedrol (Germany) – in seven innings with a 1.29 ERA
Best ERA min 5 innings): 0.00 – Jeffrey Barto (Czechia)

Where to Follow
All games will be streamed live through Baseballeurope.tv, with play-by-play coverage on the WBSC Europe website. Fans can purchase a full tournament pass for €29.99 or single-game access for €6.99.

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Featured image by @honkbalsoftbalnl