The World Baseball Classic Has Finally Captured Team USA’s Full Attention

The tournament often struggled in its first five iterations to draw the best American players. That’s no longer the case after a loss in the 2023 final raised the stakes for this year’s edition.

It’s possible that the best thing that ever happened to the World Baseball Classic was when Mike Trout struck out to end it. 

The moment was electric, an incredible cap to the 2023 tournament, as the game’s two greatest players faced off and Shohei Ohtani closed out the championship for Team Japan. It was also a source of frustration among the Americans who had declined an opportunity to play, including righty Logan Webb, whose Giants preferred he stay with the club for spring training. Three years later, San Francisco wanted Webb to stick around again, but when national team manager Mark DeRosa called to recruit him, Webb said yes right away. 

“Watching Team USA lose in the championship was hard for a lot of guys,” says Webb. “This is probably, I would say, the best team that we’ve ever put out there. Guys are excited. I think it’s great for baseball.”

Three years ago, the top three of the U.S. rotation consisted of 36-year-old Lance Lynn, 41-year-old Adam Wainwright and 34-year-old Merrill Kelly. This year it will roll out the two reigning Cy Young Award winners, 23-year-old Pirates ace Paul Skenes and 29-year-old Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, and the 29-year-old Webb, who was an All-Star each of the past two seasons. 

DeRosa laughs as he recalls how few of the players he phoned this year let him get through his pitch. “The conversations were a heck of a lot different than in 2023,” he says.

Megan Briggs/Getty Images

Players from other countries might roll their eyes at the Americans for ever needing a hard sell. But the U.S.’s full participation—finally—helps make global something that was already true regionally: The WBC is baseball at its best. 

“I do feel like Latin America and Japan kind of have forced the United States’s hand in this,” says DeRosa admiringly.

The U.S. is just catching up. When the tournament debuted in 2006, fans and even some players—most of them American—saw it as a bit of a gimmick, baseball’s questionable attempt to capture some of the energy of the soccer World Cup. DeRosa, who played on Team USA that year, admits he mostly signed up to get out of spring training and hang out with Derek Jeter for a couple of weeks. But 20 years later, nearly every active player grew up watching the tournament. Playing in the WBC is fulfilling a childhood dream almost as much as playing in the World Series is. 

Aaron Judge is set to represent Team USA at the World Baseball Classic for the first time. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Players from Latin America and Asia have never needed much convincing. “I think our countries love baseball more than anybody in the world,” says Venezuelan Dodgers shortstop Miguel Rojas. “It’s our first sport. We find a lot of joy in the game of baseball, a lot of unity. So a lot of people get together to watch baseball and root for the same thing, and that doesn't happen often, especially in our countries, because we have so many different teams over there, many people to root for. But when it’s about the country, everybody gets together and roots for the same thing.”

Webb says, “I didn’t really understand it until I got to professional baseball. But you’re taking these guys away from their home.” The WBC allows them to spend time in a clubhouse full of people who speak their language, understand their customs and share their pride in the place that produced them. And because pool play takes place around the world before everyone comes together in Miami for the knockout rounds, they get to do it in front of their families and friends.

Several members of the Dominican Republic team, including Teoscar Hernández and Manny Machado, said in 2023 that they would choose a WBC victory over a World Series victory. This spring, Japanese World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto said he considered the two equal. (Some Japanese reporters, who expressed concern throughout October that Yamamoto’s extensive playoff usage might affect his WBC availability the following March, might disagree.) Rangers reliever Alexis Díaz, who opted out of this year’s tournament at the last minute because he wants to make the big-league team, says everyone he knows in Puerto Rico would rather see him win a WBC than a World Series.

Players who have been—and players who have only watched on TV, including Webb—rave about the atmosphere, especially for the games held in Miami, which is often known as the capital of Latin America. Fans packed loanDepot Park, throwing dance parties in the aisles, waving flags and banging drums. After the U.S.’s quarterfinal win over Venezuela in 2023, shortstop Trea Turner called it “the loudest game I’ve ever played in.” Reliever Ryan Pressly said it made him want to go play winter ball in Latin America. Third baseman Tim Anderson said he thought the crowd was better than in the MLB playoffs. 

Paul Skenes took the mound for Team USA on Tuesday for an exhibition against the San Francisco Giants before his scheduled WBC start against Mexico on Monday. | Mark J. Rebilas-Imagn Images

Challenges remain. The tournament serves at the pleasure of MLB, which has thrown resources at the event but will always prioritize its own season; for example, the pitch limits, from 65 per game in the first round to 95 in the final, are probably not going anywhere. Clubs continue to negotiate with the national teams around their players’ usage, which is how you get Skubal starting against Great Britain in the group stage and then returning to Tigers camp, and why Ohtani will not pitch for Japan. And most notably this year, many players found themselves off rosters after being denied insurance coverage. (The WBC takes out insurance policies on the MLB contracts of participating players; the insurance company pays their salary if they are injured during the tournament, as when then-Mets closer Edwin Díaz tore his patellar tendon during a celebration in 2023.)

Team Puerto Rico threatened to withdraw entirely after stars including Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor and Astros third baseman Carlos Correa were deemed uninsurable due to previous injuries; after the league and the union lobbied the insurance company, National Financial Partners, Red Sox reliever Jovani Morán and Twins minor league reliever Luis Quiñones were reinstated for the Puerto Ricans. Rojas, who had hoped to play for Team Venezuela but was denied because he is 37, had no such luck. 

“Right now, I feel like it’s not 100% the best against the best,” says Rojas. “It’s just whoever can go against whoever can go.”

And indeed, that lasting image from 2023 would be impossible to reproduce this year—not only will Ohtani not be pitching, but Trout was denied insurance coverage and will not play at all. Still, the players who can go expect to put on a show. The victory will be all the more legitimate because every country is finally sending its best. Webb believes this is Team USA’s year. And either way, he plans to be there.

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