The World Baseball Classic is officially back! We’re been running preview content for the last two weeks, but now that the tournament is actually underway, you’ve got to pick a team to root for. You may even have to pick one team from each of the four pools. To help you choose a your favorite, I’ll be offering a reason to cheer for each of the 20 teams in the field. We started with Pool C and Pool D yesterday. Pool B will run later today.

Canada

The big reason to root for Canada is that this might finally be the year the team breaks through and makes it to the knockout round. With Puerto Rico at the top, Pool A is by no means a cakewalk, but the second spot doesn’t have a hands-down favorite. Baseball America’s power rankings have Canada ranked seventh in the tournament, with Cuba ninth, Colombia 14th, and Panama 16th. Canada’s outfield is going to be really fun. Let’s break it down.

Right Field: When healthy, Tyler O’Neill is a human mountain who hits majestic dingers. (When not healthy, he’s still a human mountain, just without the dingers.) O’Neill had an ugly 2025 season, getting into just 54 games for the Orioles (due to not healthy) and running a wRC+ of 93. However, the underlying numbers weren’t bad at all. He posted a paltry .218 BABIP and a robust .360 xwOBA, the second-highest mark of his career. The small sample size is messing with us here. O’Neill is just one year removed from a 2024 season in which he launched 31 home runs with a 133 wRC+, and he’s raked in spring training. He also batted .615 in the 2023 WBC. Watch out.

Center Field: O’Neill was once a plus defender, but age and injuries have slowed him down, and his numbers in recent years aren’t great. Luckily, Denzel Clarke can cover for him. Denzel Clarke can cover everything. The A’s center fielder has a weak bat, but you could make a strong argument that he was the best defensive outfielder in baseball last year. According to Statcast, his 11 fielding runs ranked 30th among all outfielders, even though his 383 2/3 innings played ranked 123rd. On a per-inning basis, no one could touch him.

Left Field: We’ve got more power in the corners. Marlins prospect Owen Caissie just came in at 62 on our Top 100 Prospects list. Last year with the Cubs, he struck out a whopping 41% of the time in his brief major league debut, but he also launched 22 homers in 99 games at Triple-A Iowa. The 23-year-old Caissie is going to make loud contact or whiff big. Either way, it’ll be fun to watch. Should we finish with some gratuitous Denzel Clarke highlights? Of course we should.

Colombia

If you want to root for the team that’s most likely to have a pitcher take a deep breath and say, “I’m getting too old for this sh*t,” then Colombia is your squad. The team features the starting pitching duo of Jose Quintana and Julio Teheran. The 37-year-old Quintana made his major league debut in 2012, and he’ll be suiting up for the Rockies this season. Teheran is a mere 35, but he debuted for the Braves in 2011 at the tender age of 20. He spent 2025 in the Mexican League and is currently a free agent. If he pitches well, he could earn one last ride. Together, Quintana and Teheran have played for 11 different major league teams and made more than 600 major league starts. Their backs must be killing them.

Neither pitcher appeared in the 2023 WBC, but both pitched brilliantly in 2017, giving up one run apiece in their respective starts. Teheran won his, but Quintana earned a no-decision as Colombia went on to lose in extra innings. This team also has a real shot here. Colombia will definitely be relying on experience more than youth – I didn’t even mention the 38-year-old Donovan Solano – but Pool A is pretty wide open, and the team allowed just one run during its three-game qualifiers. How time flies.

Cuba

Once again, it’s all about the arms. Cuba is without several prominent major leaguers, but the roster may well have enough pitching to make it work anyway. We have to start with the 30-year-old Livan Moinelo, who plays in Japan for the SoftBank Hawks. The southpaw debuted in Japan in 2018, and he looked fine in his first season. Then he turned into one of the best pitchers in the league. Pitching in relief, he ran a 1.32 ERA and a 1.80 FIP from 2019 to 2023. That’s five years, and his ERA never rose above 1.69! In 2023, he put up a 0.98 ERA despite an elbow issue and a hip injury that required surgery after the season. Naturally, at that point, SoftBank decided to turn him into a starter. Risky move with a guy who’s coming off surgery and just put up a sub-one ERA, right? Don’t worry. Over the past two years as a starter, Moinelo is 23-8 with a combined ERA of 1.67. He’s fun to watch, too. He’s listed at just 5-foot-10 and 154 pounds. He features a four-pitch mix with a big, loopy curveball he’s not afraid to locate in the strike zone and a sneaky mid-90s fastball that seems to jump out of his hand.

If that’s not enough, can I interest you in Raidel Martínez, who spent the first 10 years of his career with the Chunichi Dragons and is now with the Yomiuri Giants? Martínez is in some ways the opposite of Moinelo. He’s a lanky right-handed closer with a career 1.99 ERA in NPB. The last time he ran an ERA above 2.00 was 2021. In 2023, he allowed just two runs in 48 appearances. He posted a 0.39 ERA. Over the past two years, he has a combined 89 saves. Maybe he should try starting.

Last, you might be familiar with Yariel Rodríguez, who put up a 3.08 ERA across 66 appearances for the Blue Jays last year. Thanks to an ugly walk rate, his peripherals weren’t as rosy, and he got lit up in the playoffs. Still his fastball touches the upper 90s.

Panama

On Wednesday, MLB.com published an article titled “World Baseball Classic partners with more than 150 brands from around the world.” Did you know that there was an entity called World Baseball Classic, Inc.? I’m betting you didn’t, because nothing kills the romance of a big worldwide sporting event like contemplating the filthy lucre that makes the whole thing run. And yet, right there on MLB.com, nestled among stories about thrilling prospects and grizzled managers and sibling connections, is a press release trumpeting the triumph of corporate synergy that is the WBC. What does this have to do with Panama? Well, I’m writing up different reasons to root for 20 different teams, and I figured with 150 different corporate partners around the world, at least one of them deserved to be rooted for. So I just picked one.

Congratulations, Panama. Sure, we will be cheering for old friends like Christian Bethancourt and Rubén Tejada and exciting prospects like Enrique Bradfield Jr., but mostly we will be cheering for your jersey sponsor, Caja de Ahorros, which is a bank.

Let’s go Caja de Ahorros! Who wants a checking account? Loans for everybody! Panama means business.

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico has one of the better rosters in the tournament, but it’s hard to talk about this team without talking about what might have been. The insurance providers for the WBC refused to insure at least eight different Puerto Rican players, including stars Carlos Correa, José Berríos, Victor Caratini, and Francisco Lindor, citing an increased injury risk. One imagines that the actuaries at the insurance companies threw a small, sad breakroom party with soda and mini cupcakes when they found out that Lindor had injured himself anyway. That all this happened right before the tournament started added insult to injury, and the team considered pulling out altogether. It’s not all that often that you get to combine two truly rewarding passions: rooting for a baseball team and heaping scorn on insurance companies, so you should really grab this opportunity while you can.

If you’re looking for a more positive reason to cheer for Puerto Rico, look no further than the catcher position. Without Caratini, Team Puerto Rico is running out 39-year-old Martín Maldonado and 35-year-old Christian Vázquez. These two share more than just a position, an advanced age, and a place of birth. They’re both no-bat catchers who don’t grade out well according to the advanced defensive metrics. They’re still playing regularly because wherever they go, their team believes they’re bringing the intangibles. It’s Nichols’ Law of Catcher Defense in action at a global scale, and Maldonado and Vázquez are playing their trade under manager Yadier Molina. Can vibes-based catching take Puerto Rico to a championship? Maybe, but only if you believe hard enough.

The World Baseball Classic is officially back! We’re been running preview content for the last several weeks, but now that the tournament is actually underway, you’ve got to pick a team to root for. You may even want to pick one team from each of the four pools. To help you decide on your favorite, I’ll be offering a reason to cheer for each of the 20 teams in the field. We started with Pool C earlier today, and we’ll run Pools A and B tomorrow.

Dominican Republic

Listing teams alphabetically has us starting with the powerhouse of the group. How’s this for a lineup?

C: Austin Wells
1B: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
2B: Ketel Marte
SS: Geraldo Perdomo
3B: Manny Machado
LF: Juan Soto
CF: Julio Rodríguez
RF: Fernando Tatis Jr.
DH: Junior Caminero
P: Cristopher Sánchez

This isn’t just a lineup without any weak spots. It’s a dream team, and it still leaves stars like Jeremy Peña and Oneil Cruz on the bench!

The real reason to root for the Dominican Republic, though, is that they’ll be out for revenge. They won the 2013 WBC, but in 2023, losses to Venezuela and Puerto Rico left them 2-2 in pool play, and the run differential tiebreaker kept them from advancing. The Dominican Republic didn’t even make it out of pool play! Manager Rodney Linares heard about it in a big way. Albert Pujols is at the helm now, and he knows he’s got to do better.

Pool D is a bit softer this time around, with the Netherlands taking the place of Puerto Rico, but the this team might not care. They’re out for blood, and it’s not hard to envision them going scorched earth and running up the run differential as much as they can. With that lineup, they’ll have more than enough firepower. They just hung 12 runs on the Tigers on Tuesday. If what you’re looking for in a WBC team is a high likelihood that watching them play will feel similar to watching a Rambo movie, then the Dominican Republic is your squad.

Israel

Look, I don’t know if we’re going to see Robert Stock pitch, or how much he’ll throw even if we do, but he’s the kind of guy you cheer for. I wrote an article about his journey last year, but it’s worth digging even deeper, because it really puts the “World” in “World Baseball Classic.” No less an authority than Baseball America named Stock the best 13-year-old player in the country in 2003, the best 14-year-old player in 2004, and then the overall Youth Player of the Year in 2005. “The 6-foot, 180-pound 15-year-old was tossing 90-mph fastballs by the time he was 14 and has been known to connect on 400-foot home runs, using a wood bat,” wrote Alan Matthews. Stock enrolled at USC as both a catcher and a pitcher so that he could become draft eligible when he was 19.

The Cardinals took him in the second round in 2009, but things were a lot harder in the pros. After three years of trying to make it as a catcher, Stock switched back to pitching. After three more years, Stock still hadn’t advanced to Double-A, and the Cardinals released him. He bounced to the Astros, then the Pirates, then the Reds, and finally to the Padres, who finally promoted him to the big leagues in 2018. Still armed with an upper-90s fastball as a 28-year-old rookie, Stock made the most of the chance. He ran a 2.50 ERA and 2.71 FIP across 32 appearances and 39 2/3 innings.

The success was fleeting. Stock struggled in 2019 and kept bouncing, to the Phillies, the Red Sox, the Cubs, and the Mets. In 2022, he landed with the Doosan Bears of the KBO as a starter, running a 3.60 ERA and earning another shot despite running a 11.5% walk rate. He went to Driveline, started 2023 pitching for Israel in the WBC and reported to Triple-A Nashville on a minor league deal with the Brewers, but after just three starts, Milwaukee let him go. He finished the season with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League.

Stock threw a no-hitter in Long Island, but his overall numbers weren’t great. He spent 2024 pitching for Tecolotes de los Dos Laredos of the Mexican League, but before he did, he completely overhauled his mechanics. He dropped his arm angle from right around the league average to a sidearm slot. He went from throwing the four-seamer more than half the time to being an east-west sinker-slider guy with 40 inches of break differential between the two pitches. He was an entirely new pitcher. He went 9-4 with a 3.39 ERA with Dos Laredos, and then the won the pitching Triple Crown in the Mexican Winter League, going 10-2 with a 1.60 ERA.

Stock returned to the Red Sox in 2025, putting up solid numbers in Triple-A but struggling in two big league appearances. He’s now in minor league camp with the Mets, where he’s struck out six batters and allowed just one baserunner across three scoreless innings. Stock is now 36 years old with just 75 1/3 major league innings under his belt but a whole lot of miles.

Netherlands

The Netherlands boast a lot of familiar Curaçaoan faces. They’ll have stars like Ozzie Albies, Xander Bogaerts, and Kenley Jansen. They’ll have old friend Didi Gregorius, the only Didi in major league history, who last appeared in the majors in 2022 and has been playing in the Mexican League. They’ll even have brothers of familiar faces in Jeremi Profar and Sharlon Schoop. But Ceddanne Rafaela is the wild card here.

Fresh off a Gold Glove, Boston’s center fielder already has two home runs and a 224 wRC+ in spring training and – you know what? I’m going to have to stop there. I love to watch Rafaela play. He’s exciting in ways both good and bad. He makes you scream when he does something spectacular with his glove, and he makes you scream when he waves at yet another slider in the dirt. But Kiri Oler already nailed the thing that should make us root for the Netherlands in her Pool D preview. It’s this song, “Honkbal Hoofdklasse (On My Radio Tonight)” by Johannes Vonk and the Clogheads, which I listened to on repeat as I wrote this section:

Just to be clear, Johannes Vonk and the Clogheads are not an actual band. This song was recorded in 2020 by Milo Edwards and Nate Bethea of the comedy podcast “Trashfuture,” and jokingly attributed to the fictional 80s band with the 80-grade name. I don’t know much about Trashfuture, but this song is perfect, and after listening to it 10 times in a row, I am ready to run through a brick wall (or even a dam) for the Netherlands and their merry band of honkbalers.

Nicaragua

Nicaragua went winless in 2023, and if the team is going to win a game this time around, it will be on the shoulders of New York Met Mark Vientos. Along with Carlos Rodriguez of the Brewers, he’s one of two current major leaguers on the Nicaraguan roster (free agent Erasmo Ramírez is also suiting up), and although he struggled to a 97 wRC+ in 2025, it’s hard to get the image of his three-win 2024 season, in which he ran a 132 wRC+ and blasted 27 homers in just 111 games, out of your mind. After five spring training games, Vientos somehow has an average exit velocity of 96 mph (!) and a batting average of .077 (?!). He has a 110-mph lineout, a 109.9-mph double play, a 105.2-mph fly out, and then another double play at 104.7 mph. Playing against the Mets in an exhibition game on Tuesday, Vientos did finally get a ball to touch grass, ripping a 108-mph single.

The only logical(ish) conclusion I can draw is that Vientos has been saving all of his luck for team Nicaragua. He’s planning on running a BABIP of .850 in the WBC, blooping and blasting his country past the rest of Pool D and into the knockout round, relying on the wisdom of manager Dusty Baker to hit ‘em where they ain’t.

If you’re a Yankees or Phillies fan and you don’t feel comfortable rooting for a Met, maybe you can root for Jeter Downs, who is still not Mookie Betts, but is thriving with the Softbank Hawks of the NPB, running a 123 wRC+ in 2025.

Venezuela

I’m not telling you anything you don’t know here, but Venezuela’s lineup is extremely good. They’ve got Ronald Acuña Jr., Jackson Chourio, and Wilyer Abreu in the outfield. They’ve got Willson Contreras, Luis Arraez, Eugenio Suárez, Maikel Garcia, and Andrés Giménez on the infield. They’ve got William Contreras and Salvador Perez behind the plate. That’s a lot of great bats and great gloves. Garcia and Abreu both won Gold Gloves in 2025, and Giménez is a three-time winner who took home the Platinum Glove in 2024. Honestly, maybe the exciting thing should be the glovework. But what I’m most excited about is the bullpen.

Venezuela doesn’t have much starting pitching depth behind Ranger Suarez, but pitching in the WBC is an all-hands-on-deck enterprise, and Venezuela has a whole lot of big arms to choose from. Daniel Palencia ran a 2.91 ERA and saved 22 games last year, with his four-seamer averaging 99.6 mph. Angel Zerpa’s sinker averaged 96.6. Anthony Molina, Antonio Senzatela, Luinder Avila, and José Buttó were all above 95 mph. Eduardo Rodriguez and Yoendrys Gómez don’t bring as much heat, but their four-seamers were both well above the league average in terms of whiff rate.

Not all of these guys are standouts, but that’s a really deep ‘pen. Venezuela may well mash their way to the knockout round, but they could just as easily make it there by putting up zero after zero.

The World Baseball Classic is officially back! We’re been running preview content for the last several weeks, but now that the tournament is actually underway, you’ve got to pick a team to root for. You may even want to pick one team from each of the four pools. To help you decide on your favorite, I’ll be offering a reason to cheer for each of the 20 teams in the field. We’re starting with Pool C because it’s kicking off today. So is Pool D, whose reasons will run a little later this afternoon. Pools A and B aren’t getting underway until tomorrow, so that’s when we’ll run their excitement primers.

Australia

Australia was one of the big surprises of the 2023 WBC. In the first game of pool play, the Australians took down South Korea in an 8-7 barnburner. Both teams lost to Japan and won all their other games, which was enough to push Australia into the knockout round and keep South Korea out. Australia lost to Cuba by just one run in the quarterfinals. This time around, their final game in Pool C will be against – you guessed it – South Korea, and if the seeds hold true, then that game will once again decide who moves on to the knockout round and who goes home. It should be an exciting one!

I was going to overthink things and talk about Tim Kennelly here. The guy is 39 and made it to Triple-A with the Phillies, and then he went back home and laid siege to the Australia Baseball League record books. He’s the all-time league leader in hits, homers, and RBIs, and he’s second in stolen bases. But we should keep things simple and talk about Travis Bazzana. Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday, Team USA played its first tuneup game before the World Baseball Classic, thrashing the Giants 15-1 in a scheduled 10-inning exhibition. This came on the heels of Monday’s announcement lining up the American rotation for pool play in the WBC.

The WBC is a bit unusual for an international best-on-best sporting tournament in that it takes place during the preseason, rather than during a dedicated break (as in Olympic ice hockey or the 2022 FIFA World Cup) or the offseason. Therefore, the best active managers and coaches for each country are unavailable to coach in the tournament, as they would be in hockey and soccer.

For the first four tournaments, USA Baseball got around this by hiring either unemployed or recently retired managers — Buck Martinez, Davey Johnson, Joe Torre, and Jim Leyland. Highly successful and well-respected managers, in the latter three cases. For 2023, they went with Mark DeRosa. Read the rest of this entry »

Everybody remembers the biggest moment from the 2023 World Baseball Classic. In the championship game, with Japan leading the United States 3-2 in the top of the ninth, Mike Trout stepped into the box as the tying run. Even though he was the Mike Trout – the surefire Hall of Famer with 71 WAR to his name who was coming off a 176 wRC+ in 2022 – he looked a little nervous. Before he even dug his cleats into the dirt, he sneaked four different peeks out toward the pitcher’s mound.

He did so for good reason. Out on the mound was Shohei Ohtani, the most fearsome player in the game, as well as Trout’s teammate. The endgame was a chess match. Ohtani started Trout with a ferocious sweeper just below the zone, but Trout took an absurdly easy take. No longer nibbling, Ohtani blew a center-cut fastball right by Trout at 100 mph. He touched 102 on the next pitch. At the end, with the count full, Ohtani threw a sweeper that started out over the heart of the plate and then took a left turn so sharp you’d think it had just read A People’s History of the United States. Trout couldn’t lay off it. Japan had won. Pandemonium reigned in the Tokyo Dome.

We could easily get another best-on-best matchup to end the 2026 WBC. Whether you believe that the best pitcher in baseball right now is Tarik Skubal or Paul Skenes, either one of them could find himself trying to close out the championship against Ohtani or Juan Soto (or Ronald Acuña Jr., or Vladimir Guerrero Jr., or Fernando Tatis Jr.; those Juniors really can hit). We could just as easily see Yoshinobu Yamamoto or Cristopher Sánchez facing down Aaron Judge. Read the rest of this entry »

A key part of developing as a baseball analyst is knowing one’s own scouting blind spots. So here’s one of mine: I will go absolutely berserk for any prospect who shows even a hint of life against older competition in international play. I can’t help myself.

Brett Lawrie makes the Canadian Olympic team just out of high school in 2008, and plays regularly in the tournament. (This tournament featured lights-out pitching by 21-year-old Hyun Jin Ryu and 20-year-old Stephen Strasburg, the latter the only college player on Team USA.) Lawrie then plays for Canada again in the 2009 WBC, before making his professional debut.

Also on Team Canada in 2009: 20-year-old Single-A right-hander Phillippe Aumont comes into a jam with the bases loaded and nobody out against Team USA, and blows up David Wright, Kevin Youkilis, and Curtis Granderson in succession. Read the rest of this entry »

The rosters for the 2026 World Baseball Classic were announced earlier this month, so aside from changes due to injuries or insurance eligibility decisions, we now know who will be suiting up for each country when the tournament begins in early March. In this series of posts, you’ll find a team-by-team breakdown, with notable players, storylines to monitor, and speculation on the serious stuff, such as how the squad will fare on the field, as well as commentary on some of the less serious stuff, like uniforms and team aura.

If you missed the post covering Pool A, or you need a quick refresher on how the WBC works, you can catch up on that here. The post covering Pool B is right over here, and for Pool C click here.

The five teams competing in Pool D — Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, Israel, and Nicaragua — will play their games in Miami from March 6 to March 11. The two clubs with the best records after playing each of the other four will advance to the Knockout stage, where they will compete in a single-elimination bracket against the six teams that advance from the other pools. Read the rest of this entry »

The rosters for the 2026 World Baseball Classic were announced late last week, so aside from changes due to injuries or insurance eligibility decisions, we now know who will be suiting up for each country when the tournament begins early next month. In this series of posts, you’ll find a team-by-team breakdown, with notable players, storylines to monitor, and speculation on the serious stuff, such as how the squad will fare on the field, as well as commentary on some of the less serious stuff, like uniforms and team aura.

If you missed the post covering Pool A, or you need a quick refresher on how the WBC works, you can catch up on that here. And the post covering Pool B is right over here.

The five teams competing in Pool C — Japan, South Korea, Australia, Czechia, and Chinese Taipei — will play their games in Tokyo from March 5 to March 10. The two clubs with the best records after playing each of the other four will advance to the Knockout stage, where they will compete in a single-elimination bracket against the six teams that advance from the other pools. Read the rest of this entry »

The rosters for the 2026 World Baseball Classic were announced late last week, so aside from changes due to injuries or insurance eligibility decisions, we now know who will be suiting up for each country when the tournament begins early next month. In this series of posts, you’ll find a team-by-team breakdown, with notable players, storylines to monitor, and speculation on the serious stuff, such as how the squad will fare on the field, as well as commentary on some of the less serious stuff, like uniforms and team aura.

If you missed the post covering Pool A, or you need a quick refresher on how the WBC works, you can catch up here.

The five teams competing in Pool B — the United States, Mexico, Italy, Great Britain, and Brazil — will play their games at Daikin Park in Houston from March 6 to March 11. The two clubs with the best records after playing each of the other four will advance to the Knockout stage, where they will compete in a single-elimination bracket against the six teams that advance from the other pools. Read the rest of this entry »

Final rosters for the 2026 World Baseball Classic were announced late last week, so aside from small changes due to injuries or insurance eligibility decisions, we now know who will be suiting up for each nation when the tournament begins early next month. In this series of posts you’ll find a team-by-team breakdown with notable players, storylines to monitor, and speculation on the serious stuff, such as how the squad will fare on the field, as well as commentary on some of the less serious stuff, like uniforms and team aura.

First, a quick refresher on how the WBC works and all the important details for this year’s edition. Twenty nations qualify for the tournament based on performance either in pool play during the previous WBC or during qualifying events last spring. The 20 teams are divided into four pools of five teams for the first stage of the tournament, which runs from March 5 to March 11. Team pool assignments were made last April and attempted to prioritize competitive balance (understanding that final rosters were not yet known), with host nations assigned to pools playing in their home countries. This year, pool play will be conducted at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Daikin Park in Houston, the Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, and LoanDepot Park in Miami.

During pool play, each team plays the other four teams in its assigned pool, and the two teams with the best record in each pool advance to the Knockout stage. During the Knockout stage, the remaining eight teams are placed into a single-elimination bracket that will determine the overall winner. The first round of bracket play will take place on March 13 and 14, with the semifinals on March 15 and 16, and the championship game on March 17.

Read the rest of this entry »