FORT MYERS, Fla.—The pair of shock-the-world wins by the Netherlands over the Dominican Republic came as a bolt from the blue to most baseball fans. The mere name for the sport of baseball in Holland (“honkbal”) does little to suggest an international powerhouse capable of making noise in the World Baseball Classic.

Yet there were those for whom the success of the Netherlands (which includes players from Holland as well as Aruba and Curacao) in the WBC was not completely shocking. Red Sox Vice President of International Scouting Craig Shipley has long respected the fashion in which the Netherlands, under manager Rod Delmonico, plays the game.

“Baseball has a long history throughout Holland. (The team’s) success has been eye-opening to a lot of people, but if you’ve seen that club play, they’re very professional,” Shipley said by phone. “They’re very advanced in their preparation.”

The Netherlands has produced eight big leaguers, most famously the Zeist-born Bert Blyleven, the 287-game winner who is current serving as the pitching coach of Team Netherlands. More recently, Rick VandenHurk has pitched in the majors the past two years for the Marlins.

In recent years, the Sox – along with the rest of Major League Baseball – have intensified the search for talent in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. In 2005, MLB started running a summer European Academy. The camp, which takes place in Tirrenia, Italy, offers instruction to a select group of invited players (primarily ages 16-18) and gives scouts a chance to evaluate them.

Shipley and Pacific Rim Coordinator (and Team Australia manager) Jon Deeble – the same tandem that spearheaded the efforts to scout Daisuke Matsuzaka – traveled to the Academy in the summer of 2007. There, they saw Jennell Hudson, a raw, athletic pitcher from Germany whom they made the organization’s first amateur signee under the current ownership group.

Hudson, now 19, spent last year in Fort Myers and pitched in the Gulf coast League, where he went 0-1 with a 5.40 ERA, 11 walks and 11 strikeouts in 15 innings. He is clearly a work in progress, a reflection of the lack of available in Germany, but shows some attributes that allow a scout to project.

“He’s got a long way to go. He’s very young as far as baseball maturity goes,” said Shipley. “His secondary stuff is crude. That’s what he’s learning more about, refining. It takes time for young pitchers, especially those who haven’t competed that much and don’t have that many innings under their belts. For him, it’s about getting experience, getting innings, getting stronger, learning the system and adapting to it. Those are a lot of things for a young kid from Europe to adjust to.”

All the same, Shipley and Deeble saw enough talent – both raw players like Hudson, as well as more advanced ones from other countries – that the Sox decided to build a more permanent scouting infrastructure in Europe. That winter, Mike Lord was hired as the European Scouting Coordinator, and later, the team made a second hire (Brian Farley) based in the Netherlands to continue building the team’s Old World presence.

“(Europe) was obviously a big piece of the puzzle that we wanted to put in place. It’s taken a while,” said Shipley. “Mike’s done a great job in a short period of time ramping up our knowledge base and our presence.”

While Hudson was signed on the basis of his performance at the Academy, the next Sox player to come from Europe was scouted earlier. Lord saw Dutch pitcher Swen Huijer early in the year and got multiple looks at him before signing the right-hander last April.

Of course, Huijer was hard to miss. He is 6-foot-9, easily the tallest international player to sign with the Sox.

“He’s a huge kid,” said Shipley. “For a kid his size, it’s impressive how coordinated he is.

“He was probably put in more of a baseball environment (than Hudson) for a longer period of time,” Shipley added. “The one thing that really stands out about Sven is that he attacks. He throws the ball over the plate. No matter where you pitch, that’s a positive attribute. Again, his secondary stuff is a work in progress, but he shows occasionally a breaking ball that gives you hope that down the road it will be a good pitch.”

Huijer performed well as a 17-year-old in the Gulf Coast League last year. He went 3-1 with a 2.81 ERA in 16 innings, striking out four and walking none.

Though he is the first player from the Netherlands to enter the Sox system, he is unlikely the last. A country that has produced a pair of memorable WBC upsets will now almost surely be monitored more extensively than ever.

“There have been several teams that have scouted Europe for quite a while,” Shipley said, citing the Twins and Mariners as examples. “We got to the party a little bit later. That comes down to manpower and being able to change the way you’ve been in the market at times. … There’s more and more teams paying attention to Europe, just as there’s more and more teams paying attention to the whole world.”

As the World Baseball Classic continues to shine a light on previously obscure corners of the baseball globe, that trend figures only to continue.