February 13, 2019

By Adam Morissette

Baseball Canada

MEXICO CITY, Mexico - Canada’s journey to securing a spot in the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo will begin in Seoul, Korea this November after the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) announced the three opening round groups and host locations for II WBSC Premier12 event that will be staged from November 2-17, 2019.

The top team in the Premier12 final standings from the Asia/Oceania territory (not including automatically qualified Japan) and the top finisher from the Americas will gain direct entries into the six-team Olympic Baseball competition at the Tokyo 2020 Games, without having to go through additional qualifiers.

Canada, ranked No. 10 in the world according to the latest WBSC world rankings, is part of Group C featuring host and world No. 3 Korea, No. 5 Cuba and No. 7 Australia. All Group C games will take place at Seoul’s Gocheok Sky Dome.

Group A will take place at Charros Baseball Stadium in Jalisco, Mexico with No. 6 Mexico joined by No. 2 USA, No. 8 Netherlands and No. 12 Dominican Republic, while Group B, to be held at Intercontinental Stadium in Taichung, Taiwan, will feature host No. 4 Chinese Taipei, No. 1 Japan, No. 9 Venezuela and No. 11 Puerto Rico.

The top two teams from each group will advance to the six-team Super Round, which will be hosted by Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) league and played at Chiba’s ZOZO Marine Stadium and the iconic Tokyo Dome, where the championship final will also be played.

The WBSC also launched the official 2019 Premier12 website -- premier12.wbsc.org/2019 -- in six languages, including English, French, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Traditional Chinese.