With a dominating pitching performance, Asia-Pacific advanced to the winner's bracket of the Little League World Series 3-0 over Caribbean. Junho Jeong started the game for Asia-Pacific and tossed four spectacular innings, allowing three hits and a walk while striking out ten batters. He handed the game over to Sangheon Park, who whiffed five more Caribbean hitters over two hitless frames to polish off the shutout. Asia-Pacific got two runs in the first inning, tacked one on later for good measure, and swept through their first-round matchup. 

Asia-Pacific gets just enough offense

Although their offense wasn't firing on all-cylinders, the Asian-Pacific bats did enough to support their staff that was simply dealing through all six innings on Friday. Their offense needed to do very little in the first inning, except watch pitches sail everywhere but the strike zone, as they utilized four walks and two hit batsmen to push two runs across the plate. 

Asia-Pacific's offense was very stagnant otherwise than the first inning. They loaded the bases but did not score in the second frame, and they failed to generate dangerous scoring chances otherwise. Minho Choi doubled to spark a mini-rally in the sixth inning. They scored their final run of the game on an RBI single from Jungtaek Ru. 

Pitching dominates the game

Despite their wildness in the first inning, the Caribbean hurlers turned in a solid performance of their own on Friday night. Jurrangelo Cijntje struck out six and surrendered just two hits and two runs over 4.1 solid innings for the Caribbean champs. Gedionne Marlin and Nazir Fernandez combined for the last five outs in the Caribbean's losing effort. 

However, despite their excellent pitching, nobody was going to touch the Asia-Pacific pitching on Friday. An error, wild pitch, and sacrifice bunt put a runner in scoring position in the first inning for the Caribbean, but Jeong got a critical strikeout before inducing an inning-ending ground out. The next thirteen outs the Asia-Pacific staff recorded were all by strikeout, as the Caribbean bats could barely touch Jeoung and Park. They put only one more runner on third base, in the fourth inning, courtesy of two of their three hits, but failed to score the momentum-changing run.

After the close escape in the fourth inning, the Asia-Pacific manager went to Park, who struck out the side in the fifth inning and stranded a runner on first base in the sixth inning to complete the shutout. 

A rare baserunner for the Caribbean team.  Gene J. Puskar AP Photo

Asia-Pacific will look to continue their pitching dominance when they face Canada, who shocked Japan earlier on Friday. Caribbean will have the tough task of eliminating Japan, a feat few teams have achieved in the past. 

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