The Republic of the Philippines National Team backed into the right to being throttled by the likes of Japan, South Korea and Chinese Taipei over the weekend by fighting to a 12-inning 0-0 tie against Thailand. The tie gave them group B by virtue of run differential.

The first games of the?Asian Championship?begin today with the host team taking on the Korean team this afternoon. As was the case with the World Cup, all the action will be broadcast live on Stadeo.TV. For other statistics and information, go to the IBAF site.

The late game will be?tourney favorite Japan taking on the Philippines in the evening.

The Korea Times has a terribly translated preview here. The article suggests the Korean team could use any one of three pitchers as starters: Park Chan-ho, Jeon Byung-ho or Ryu Jae-kuk.

Ryu found a little time to criticize the Chinese Taipei batting order, adding:

“Taiwan’s batters are less than expected.’”

The English Dong-A checks in with an article on Korean manager Sun Dong-yeol here. Taiwan Baseball will be covering things in depth from the Taiwanese side. They have final rosters here.

Tomorrow’s early game should be the best match of the first round with Japan facing off against Korea. Japan is expected to throw Yu Darvish for the game and the Koreans will likely counter with Ryu Hyun-jin. The evening game will see Chinese Taipei testing out it’s mercy rule ability versus the Philippines.

Finally on Sunday the Koreans will play the Philippines and Japan and Chinese Taipei will square off.