Olympics To WBC, Rob Cordemans Has Seen It All

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At 42 years old, Rob Cordemans has experienced the highs and lows of international baseball, seeing its growth and growing pains.

He was on the Netherlands’ top-level team as early as 1995, and a year later he was pitching in the Atlanta Olympics. If that feels like a lifetime ago, well, at least R.A. Dickey was in those Olympics too.

“We were pitching against those great Cuban players, like (Orestes) Kindelan or (Omar) Linares, and they were using metal bats,” Cordemans said. “We didn’t know any better.” When asked in jest how those teams insured their players, Cordemans replied, “In the Netherlands, we don’t worry about such things.”

So much has changed since Cordemans first suited up for the Dutch national team, from the bats to the pros—first minor leaguers, then big leaguers—in international play. He has spent the last 22 years as his team’s ace pitcher, but most North American fans rarely see his teams. He pitched in every Olympics from 1996-2008, and this will be his fourth World Baseball Classic.

While baseball has been kicked out of the Olympics, only to be reinstated for 2020 in Tokyo, Cordemans has no question about which event he prefers.

“It’s the Classic, no question,” he said in a telephone interview from Arizona, where he was helping the Dutch get ready for another WBC run. “The Classic is all baseball. In the Olympics, you’re in the village, and there’s so much going on. It’s fun, but it’s a lot of other sports; it’s not run like the Classic, where everything is about baseball.

“I mean the Olympics are great but the players who play in the Classic are better. It’s just a better tournament, a better event.”

Cordemans has been better than many of the pitchers he has faced over the course of his long international career, and his career in the Dutch Major League. He hasn’t had many regrets in his baseball career, but he does allow for wondering what would have happened if he’d pitched in the U.S. professionally.

He wasn’t drafted out of Indian River (Fla.) JC, where he was the 1997 Florida JC pitcher of the year. Cordemans says even then, his mid- to upper 80s fastball wasn’t enough to merit significant attention. He went to spring training the next year with the Montreal Expos but opted to go back to Holland, as he regularly referred to his home country, when the Expos told him he’d start off in rookie ball.

“I just didn’t throw 90, and that’s what it took back then,” he said. “I mean, that’s the biggest thing that has changed. It used to be in Holland if you threw 90 (mph), you could get signed. Now, there’s no way. It has to be 92 if not more.

“The velocity has just changed so much, it’s always more, more, more. I coach back home when I’m not pitching, and we are working with throwing programs, weighted balls, everything, just trying to find more velocity for our pitchers.”

Being a power pitcher has never been Cordemans’ game. In the 2000 Olympics, when Cordemans faced Team USA in the round-robin, his fastball sat in the 85-87 mph range, and for the most part, he’s been that kind of finesse pitcher throughout his career.

However, he’s always been able to throw quality strikes, and he’s always had tremendous feel for his upper-70s changeup, which features arm-side life at times and fade at others.

A scout with a major league organization who covers Europe likened Cordemans to a righthanded Jamie Moyer, saying his changeup is his best pitch “by far.” Another likened him to late-career Bartolo Colon for his top-shelf command at his peak.

“He did it with pitchability and smarts,” the second scout said. “That’s pretty age-proof. He plays around with hitters, never gives them the same pitch . . . and they all look the same out of his hand.

“His changeup at its best is a 70 pitch and plays better due to the command and deception that he has. It makes his whole arsenal play up. . . . If he had signed at a younger age, he probably could have made it to the majors because of the command and having a plus-plus pitch.”

To most international baseball observers sampled over the last 20 years, Cordemans is the best, most consistent performer, hitter or pitcher, of any European player, even since professionals entered international play in 1997.

In 2011, Dutch teammate Tom Stuifbergen, then a Twins farmhand, closed for the national team and said he couldn’t believe Cordemans never played professionally in the States. “His changeup is probably the nastiest one I’ve ever seen,” Stuifbergen said then, refering the team’s elder statesman as “Cordeboss.”

Even with all the WBCs and Olympics, Cordemans asserts 2011 as his personal high, when the Dutch beat Cuba in the final and won the last edition of the International Baseball Federation’s World Cup. That tournament no longer is played, and the IBAF has become the World Baseball Softball Confederation.

But in 2011, while its pitching staff was diminished, Cuba still had a formidable lineup, including future big leaguers Jose Abreu, Yulieski Gourriel, Rusney Castillo and Hector Olivera, as well as Frederich Cepeda and Alfredo Despaigne. Cordemans, shrugging off several hours of rain delays in Panama, pitched into the eighth inning as the Dutch beat the Cubans to win gold.

“That start, just that I was able to come through in such a big game and compete like that, that’s probably my favorite start,” Cordemans said. “It was great to win because that was the first time for the Netherlands to win a World Cup, and we had a great run there. I think we beat Cuba five times in a row.”

One of those wins came in the 2013 Classic, a 7-6 come-from-behind win that featured a dramatic tying home run by Andrelton Simmons and a walk-off bloop hit by Kalian Sams.

The Dutch still have their athletic, young core of infielders such as Simmons, Xander Bogaerts, Jurickson Profar and Jonathan Schoop. Rick Vanden Hurk, 31, has joined Cordemans as a national team stalwart in the rotation, having found success as a starter in Japan’s NPB.

Cordemans still sees himself as a pitcher the Netherlands can count on; he’s won the Dutch Major League’s pitcher of the year award nine times, most recently in 2015. At his age, he realizes the end could be near. But pitchers from any country can relate to Cordemans’ thoughts on the Classic, and on his career. A 2015 shoulder injury has curtailed his workload in his 40s, but he’s working in Arizona to be ready—as he’s been for more than 20 years—to pitch for his country.

“I just love pitching, I love competing,” he said. “I have a lot of friends who I used to play with, and they are coaching now or not playing, and they all wish they could still play. So as long as I can play, I’m going to keep going.”