WBSC Women’s Baseball World Ranking: Japan retain No. 1 position as five new programmes enter the ranking

The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) announced today an update to the WBSC Women’s Baseball World Ranking following the completion of the WBSC Women’s Baseball World Cup Group Stage last weekend. The number of teams has increased from 20 to 25 in this release, representing the largest number in the history of the discipline. Japan remain as the No. 1 Women's Baseball Programme in the world. 

The WBSC Women’s Baseball World Ranking reflect the results of every official international tournament (World Cups and continental qualifiers) as well as WBSC-sanctioned events and matches across a period of four years. The current ranking includes points awarded at the IX WBSC Women’s Baseball World Cup Group Stage, held this year in Thunder Bay, Canada, and Miyoshi City, Japan; and the continental qualifiers held in Asia, Europe and the Americas in 2022 and 2023, among other events. Unfortunately, due to the pandemic, there were no women’s baseball international events in 2020 and 2021. 

The current ranking also reflects the expiration of all points earned before September 2019. You can see the detailed world ranking methodology here.

Six-time Women’s Baseball World Champions Japan remain as the best nation in the world, with a total of 970 points thanks to their undefeated run in the Asian Qualifier this past June and Group B of the World Cup that finished last week. Japan has been on the top of the Women’s Baseball World Ranking since its inception in 2012. 

While Chinese Taipei remains in second place, Venezuela jumped two spots in the ranking after winning the Americas Qualifier in August 2022, and finishing third in Group B of the World Cup in Japan. No. 3 in the ranking represents Venezuela’s highest position ever after being fourth for 18 months from December 2019 to June 2021.

Mexico also reached their highest position ever after finishing third in Group A of the World Cup, moving up seven positions to No. 5 with 496 points, 14 behind USA who remain as the fourth nation in the list. Mexico’s improvement represents the biggest of any programme in this ranking release.

Meanwhile, Canada suffered the biggest drop among the top 10, falling from third to eighth. In spite of an impressive second-place campaign in Group A of the World Cup, the Canadian team didn’t participate in the Americas Qualifier last year and was affected by the expiration of points prior to September 2019, a situation also suffered by Australia (13), Dominican Republic (18) and the Netherlands (23), who dropped five, 12 and 10 positions respectively.

The latest WBSC Women’s Baseball World Ranking welcomed five new countries. Indonesia (17), Thailand (19), Malaysia (21), Sri Lanka (21) and Great Britain (25) made the list for the first time and joined the previous 20 teams in the ranking, for a record-setting total of 25.