Edwin Díaz, Power, Money, and the Future of International Baseball
When Edwin Díaz fell to the LoanDepot Park turf on Wednesday night, moments after closing out one of the most exciting and important contests of the WBC so far, his injury immediately overshadowed the immense gravity of the game that had preceded it.
As with any injury to any star player, the overriding reaction was one of concern. Concern for Díaz, for his home island’s team, and for the Mets, who could be without the best relief pitcher in baseball for a long time. As of Wednesday evening, there’s little information about the severity of Díaz’s injury (per the Mets, he’ll undergo imaging tomorrow), but given the mood of his teammates and the fact that he left the field in a wheelchair, it’s understandable to fear the worst.
Mixed in with concern for the player, however, is concern for the future of the World Baseball Classic itself.
MLB teams have already been reluctant to release their best players, particularly their pitchers, for this tournament. Clayton Kershaw, the most decorated American pitcher of his generation, had been eager to wear his country’s colors but had to pull out of the tournament when he could not get insurance clearance to participate. On Sunday, Mexico beat the hell out of an American pitching staff that, while stocked with quality big leaguers, was miles from the best the U.S. could have sent and was further handcuffed by usage restrictions imposed by players’ club teams. In the wake of that jarring loss, Ken Rosenthal published a column at The Athletic with an incendiary headline: “If Team USA will be handcuffed by pitching restrictions, is it worth even playing in WBC?”
Therein, Rosenthal highlighted the conflict between playing to win the WBC and playing to prepare for the MLB season. This is a particularly American problem. The major leagues of Japan and South Korea don’t seem much troubled by this conflict, nor do the superstars who turn out in droves for the Dominican Republic, Japan, Puerto Rico, or Venezuela. Or many of the American players who made the trip, it should be said; the hallmark of a somewhat rocky American trip through the group stage has been Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Tim Anderson and others showing the world what they can do.
The injury to Díaz and the minor hamstring tweak Freddie Freeman suffered Tuesday fueled concern that these injuries could imperil the WBC’s future, either as MLB owners lobby for its cancellation, or as individual teams pressure their stars to sit it out.
There are those who view the WBC as nothing more than a stunt, not worthy of risking injury for, while others see it as an exciting and important event apart from the MLB regular season, and worthy of more than its current subordinate role to the latter. (Full disclosure: I’m in the second camp. And the fact that Díaz was even celebrating this win so heavily, not to mention the grilling that Dominican Republic manager Rodney Linares took in the postgame press conference for his country’s group stage exit, suggests that I’m not alone.)
But that’s not the issue. As upsetting as Díaz’s injury was, emotions were as high in the moments afterward as they will ever be, for both proponents and detractors of the WBC. The issue is this: Should MLB teams have the right to unilaterally prevent their athletes from participating in international competition?
International team sports competitions operate on one of five levels:
- Level one: The sport is, for all intents and purposes, not contested between national teams. (American football)
- Level two: The sport is contested between national teams, but talent and money in the professional game is concentrated in one league that determines the conditions of international competition. (Baseball)
- Level three: The international game is administered by an established independent body that still is not powerful enough to dictate terms to the richest professional leagues and teams. (Basketball, ice hockey)
- Level four: The international game is administered by a powerful independent body that establishes rules that a decentralized network of professional leagues must follow. (Soccer)
- Level five: The international sanctioning body and professional league are one and the same. (Cycling)
Now, having a powerful international sanctioning body can be (stares accusingly at FIFA, the IOC, the UCI, the FIA, etc.) fraught. But such an establishment puts power in the hands of the group that at least ostensibly operates in the best interest of the sport. The World Cup attracts the best soccer players on the planet, the largest viewing audiences, the highest standard of competition, because FIFA mandates that clubs must release whichever players wish to go.
Professional sports teams make truly astonishing sums of money without actually producing anything. Their only asset is the labor of their athletes, and so they guard that labor jealously. Not just because a prized player might get hurt, but because if anyone else profits off a player’s performance it represents lost value and control for the primary employer. The people who own sports franchises don’t like that. And the history of the club vs. international game in the 2010s was one of team owners trying to pull the international game back a level.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is a longtime critic of international basketball, and is only unusual in that he’s willing to state his objection plainly. After 16 years of sending pros to the Olympics, the NHL pulled out of the 2018 Games, and took the opportunity to stage a World Cup of Hockey in 2016 as a replacement. A World Cup of Hockey organized by, and benefiting, the NHL. Even in soccer, where the FIFA mandate and the World Cup are so well-established nobody questions it, there’s pushback from lower levels. UEFA, the European sanctioning body that governs the prestigious Champions League, is in a constant struggle against FIFA for control.
The normative response is that athletes, as human beings, have a right to participate in international competitions as a matter of bodily autonomy and self-determination. Teams rent athletes’ labor, but they do not own athletes’ bodies. If a baseball player wants to play in an international tournament for national pride, for the benefit of the sport, for the benefit of fans, he ought to have the right to do so if he so chooses. He ought to be able to weigh those factors against his standing with his trade team and make a decision that works for him. Besides, baseball players get hurt constantly, while running drills, riding in taxi cabs, and having nightmares about spiders.
But norms don’t talk at this level. Money does.
The immaturity of the WBC, ironically, could be the very thing that protects it from nervous club owners. If Díaz and Freeman had gotten hurt in a WBSC-sanctioned tournament from which MLB did not profit, the league would be in total alignment with its teams. But the WBC is for all intents and purposes an MLB-controlled competition, the very kind of thing the NHL is trying to tank hockey’s international game to build. MLB will not give that up lightly, even if individual teams attempt to assert greater control over their players the next time the tournament comes around.
Díaz’s freak injury is worth fretting about, but MLB would be foolish to let it threaten the future of the WBC.
Michael is a writer at FanGraphs. Previously, he was a staff writer at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and various ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Follow him on Twitter, if you must, @MichaelBaumann.
As a Mets fan who is currently very unhappy indeed about Diaz, I will just say, again, that I don’t see the anti-WBC arguments about this as making much sense. Freak injuries can happen anywhere and anytime, because athletes are human beings. If there is any marginal difference in injury probability at all between playing baseball in the WBC and playing baseball in spring training, due to whatever increase in intensity you get in the WBC environment, it’s still not large enough to matter compared to the joy of the competition.
(And in any case that small marginal difference in intensity wouldn’t really be relevant to the case of Diaz’s injury, which was apparently sustained while doing the totally normal human, non-athletic activity of jumping up and down. If he had hurt himself jumping up and down at a concert or a birthday party, people wouldn’t be calling for those things to be banned. The only truly relevant principle here is: Shit happens.)
Gavin Lux tore his ACL stepping out of the way of a throw. Its just … something that can always happen at any time
This upset but understanding Mets fan agrees. I’m still excited to watch them this summer. Plus, the WBC has been electric.
If a player gets hurt in spring training or the regular season, at least it’s in service to games that matter.
Before last night, when is the last game Mike Trout played in that “mattered”?
Clearly it mattered to Diaz which is why he was jumping up and down. It doesn’t need to matter to Martin from Flushing for it to matter.
In as much as the line “Professional sports teams make truly astonishing sums of money without actually producing anything” is utter and complete nonsense…what they DO produce is entertainment. To that end, if the WBC is entertaining than it matters.
Ya that was a bizarre statement. They produce the green and gold laundry for which I root.
what matters is personal. mlb doesn’t matter to a lot of people. my wife wouldn’t be upset if baseball ceased to exist.
mlb matters to some people. the wbc matters to some people.
nothing matters
I appreciate when trolls make it clearer they’re joking.
Well in ST no one jumps up and down after a victory so that amount of intensity made a difference but in general stuff happens.
I believe that dangerous activities such as jumping up and down are banned as part of the standard player contract, alongside pickup basketball, riding a motorcycle, and being chased bus wild boar.
(I am not sure if I am kidding or not, it would not surprise me)
I get why players don’t want to risk it, especially pitchers. I don’t begrudge them that at all.
But from a fan perspective…I really don’t buy that we should specifically want players to avoid the WBC. The players and their agents are all very aware of the risks already. Give them the credit for making an informed decision.
And obviously this incident should not change the risk / reward analysis. If he blew out his arm, that’s what we would all be worrying about. This is a freak occurrence.
A nice, measured take. I will be reposting this on Twitter a bunch today.
https://twitter.com/baseballdoesnt/status/1636316209204326403?s=46&t=buUqwgz-Z8IqhbaXK1BB4Q
That is amazing.
As a British baseball fan, I am really hoping Harry Ford turns out to be a really good- I will be getting a Mariners jersey with his name on (am not a Mariners fan).
I look forward to a European baseball league creating such interest in the game that Harry Ford is as revered in Britain as Ohtani is in Japan.
A Twitter link is not a comment. Please say something. Thanks.
This is about the only thing MLB does for Puerto Rico. They don’t allow players to sign contacts at 16 (must be drafted), they don’t let any good players compete in winter leagues, they have no academies there and they stopped playing games in San Juan after Covid.
Please don’t hold this freak injury as an example why the WBC is bad. It’ll just screw PR…. again. #labrega
The draft of Puerto Rican players was a terrible idea as will be the international draft. MLB is doing basically nothing to promote the game to the youth to play at a high level. It’s almost as though it’s run by a bunch of wrinkled old men who all know each other.
It’s easier to get signed by an MLB club out of PR than it is to get drafted in the US.
Huh?
PR amateur players are subject to the same draft as US-based amateurs…
Ayy mi gente, la brega es real
There a couple of baseball academies in PR.
They’re just not run by a single team.
And the rules are no different that anywhere else in the US.
What was so good about middlemen steering underage athletes to teams paying *them*?
I hope it does end it.
As with any product future growth lies mostly outside the US. US is 20% of world GDP with a shrinking share. MLB is way behind NBA, let alone FIFA in monetizing this. The Milwaukee Bucks are worth nearly as much as the Los Angeles Dodgers. Any MLB owner worth their salt will insist on an MLB business plan to maximally grow franchise values independent of what the teams do. Any MLB owner not with the program needs to keep their mouth closed or sell to someone who understands the world.
I very much agree with this statement but this is like the opposite of how most owners think. Most owners have no interest in growing the game…it’s all about extracting as much from the current fans as possible. And if the entire league collapses 50 years from now because no one could afford to take their kids to a game in 2023 and so no one is buying tickets in 2073…they don’t really seem to care about that.
The thing about collapses is that they happen gradually and then suddenly. It only takes a generation for the inflection point to be noticeable. Then the downward momentum is hard to stop. It won’t take 50 years for franchise values to stagnate. It might only be 10. It might already be happening
It’s probably a cohort effect, so it’s unlikely to happen all at once. But it absolutely could happen sooner than 50 years. And it also means that you don’t know how bad it is immediately either. If no one born after 2000 buys baseball tickets, the time to deal with that was when they were still kids and now it’s too late for them.
The tide can be reversed – see Christian Dior and Microsoft – but not by anyone resembling current owners
This is true, and MLB needs to work to stop the freeloaders. This tournament is an overall net benefit to MLB and this a benefit to every team. But if a team can weasel their players out of it for whatever reason, then that creates unfairness and resentment and it will fold (sort of a reverse tragedy of the commons). The solution is for MLB to dictate stringent rules that basically let players play if they want, and ensure that this rule is not a facade. Institute painful penalties for teams that attempt to persuade players not to play.
That teams employ bean counters that tell management that letting these few players play will reduce playoff chances by X amount and risk Y dollars in revenue should not ruin the event that could very clearly expand baseball to more parts of the globe.
Competing in sporting event with no specific monetary payout for any person has to be done for specific reasons. Most athletes who compete in low visibility sports do it for pure love for the game, competition, nationalism, etc. Those who compete in more visible sports do it can get endorsement through notoriety. Regardless the incentive structure is pretty simple. Or you have the specific case of World Cup where technically it’s a play-for-free event but really there’s tons of monetary rewards for those who win because it’s one of the biggest sporting events in the entire world.
But for most professional players the incentive structure becomes much more complicated. Essentially participating “for free” is actually detrimental. Imagine if the doctor who is about to perform your life and death surgery doesn’t just work 8 hours a day, but works 13 hours because after work he does surgery for free at night to those in need. Yes, it’s great thing. Very admirable. But in the back of your mind don’t you think that you would prefer the doctor who is just working at the hospital and has had plenty of rest and sleep before opening you up where your life and bank account are both on the line? Yes, it’s a very selfish thing to think, but we all selfish people at heart.
Anyway I have no good answers. I both enjoy seeing people represent their countries at events like WBC but if my team’s superstar gets a major injury, I would hate the event.
Doctors do volunteer work all the time. Almost everyone on earth engages in activities outside their day job. It’s fruitless to “hate” that. If someone’s favourite barista breaks all their bones in a bowling tragedy it’s a waste of mental energy to hate bowling and hope it’s banned because the replacement barista isn’t as bubbly.
Well let’s put it another way. Imagine if your doctor goes out partying and getting wasted. That is also very legal and everyone has a right to do what they want in their spare time. Is that the doctor you want cutting into you even if that only takes the success rate of the procedure from say, 99.9% down to 99.6%?
Are you saying this is different from volunteering because it’s less noble? In either case it’s not up to me. I realise that I don’t control anyone else’s decisions. I choose to accept the world as it is. I know how to mind my own business.
“Imagine your baseball team going out partying and getting wasted,” whatever its merits, is an argument unlikely to sway Mets fans of all people.
Actually a majority of players do exactly that.
Some have even partied/eaten their way of the league.
This analogy really fell apart at the beginning, when you decided to compare playing baseball to open-heart surgery. It was an interesting tactic, as obviously if you want someone to agree with you, painting a picture where disagreeing might mean that you die could be effective. The problem is that it’s pretty clearly an absurd comparison. Maybe use something like the guy painting your house. I care about how well the guy painting my house does similarly to how much I care about my favorite team’s performance.
It’s not a barista; it’s one of the greatest baristas in the world at a Michelin star coffee shop. And it would be like them getting hurt competing in a back alley brewing competition.
This needs to be on YouTube
A back alley brewing competition that just got 60 million people watching in Japan and South Korea.
It’s the BTS of sports
K-Pop does seem like the name of a baseball stat.
It’s K% x Exit Velocity
Hate to break it to you guys but :
A: Plenty of doctors work 13 hours. I know surgeons who have performed surgery without having slept in over 3 days outside of various 15 minute naps in the break room. Is this ideal? No.
B. Doctors have a rule about drinking when on call. They are not supposed to, so that wouldn’t be legal, no. Do they? Some, yes. 21% of all healthcare professionals have substance abuse problems, which is higher than the general population which is 16%. Odds are if you have been to see a doctor more than a few times in your life, one of those times the doctor was drunk or high.
My limited understanding is that a lot of the doctors who perform surgeries for 3 days straight without sleeping are also the ones with substance abuse problems because how else are you going to stay awake and not totally flub it?
OK I’ve modified it to be (1-K%) times EV. I indexed them by percentiles. Of course this isn’t as good as K-Pop95. Anyway here are the K-Pop leaders among qualified batters in 2022
Vladimir Guerrero Jr – 62.9
Yandy Diaz – 60.3
Jose Ramirez – 56.7
Ahmed Rosario – 51.6
Yordan Alvarez – 50.6
These are the greatest players in the world.
do you let your employer–assuming you have one–decide what your leisure-time activities will include?
I don’t really blame anyone for not doing the WBC. I see all the arguments here about how “this could have happened anywhere” but the fact is, anytime you’re throwing a ball 98 you’re at risk of hurting yourself. So I totally get why a lot of pitchers aren’t interested. I mean, I suppose if a guy is already totally set and isn’t looking for his next contract like Gerrit Cole I can hold him to a higher standard. But if you’re Aaron Nola I get it.
Of course this injury wasn’t from throwing 98 and it was a total fluke but…I get why pitchers aren’t lining up for this and I don’t blame them one bit.
Yes and I also don’t blame anyone who wants to play for their country. It’s none of my business
The sleeper issue here is that MLB players aren’t even trained and conditioned anymore to play a 162 game schedule, so how can they handle tourneys? These guys workloads are managed from very young, off fields lives are more sedentary and structured than ever, they’re all uber hyped (stress!!) but also uber replaceable (more stress!) at the first sign of inefficiency (so many ways to be that to The Man and his legions yada yada)
I dunno about this. Pitchers may be trained to pitcher fewer innings at max effort but position players seem to want to play everyday.
Yeah, the effort required to pitch to a lineup in today’s game is much different than it once was. It’s possible/probable that pitchers throw more “max effort” pitches today then 300IP pitchers did years back.
Position players are wisely held out of games when banged up so we don’t see Ted Kluzinski gutting it out when he should be resting and getting more hurt because of it.
What players *want* has nothing to do with how they’re being conditioned by ML clubs. The MLB has 400 different roles for a 26 man roster and teams are literally running through record numbers of players a season to manage workloads (by proxy their salaries and earning potential btw)
As with all conditioning by The Man, it’s sooooo subtle (it’s not) that gen pop’s like whaaaaaat its always been this way!
This isn’t even to say that Diaz got hurt directly because players are less conditioned to last than ever, but it’s not not a part of the story somewhere
The biggest problem with the WBC is the time of year in which it is played. If MLB was truly committed to it, and we wanted the absolute best competition, the WBC would be held every four years, and when played, MLB would shut down the season (perhaps as a replacement for the ASB) for two weeks. All players would be eligible, and MLB would be responsible for funding insurance on behalf of each team sending participants. To stay fresh, players not involved in the competition could take five days off and then convene at a mini camp with a few exhibitions played (making against colleges or some other novel opponent). This format would not only improve the competition and expand eligibility, but also increase the profile and exclusivity of the event. Having the US/DR/Japan play for the WBC title in the middle of July with no other baseball game (or sport) taking place might out rate the World Series.
It would definitely be better than ASG. Also they could keep the HR Derby and whatever other skills competitions they wanted. I still am dubious that the majority of already engaged US baseball fans would care about it as much as their favorite teams, but it would be good for baseball, MLB, the players and everyone else.
100% this. Hell, I’d be fine with the preliminary rounds in March and then bracket from semi-finals on during July. You can rotate between various host cities instead of being subject to domes/warm weather sites in March.
Or just shorten to 148 games every four years and hold the full tourney in May or August or whenever.
I kind of think this is the solution. The time of year can vary. There are domes, you can hold it whenever. The problem is that the owners aren’t incentivized. They should just build this sucker right into the NPB, MLB, KBO seasons and make it functionally another version of the playoffs.
I just saw your tweet about “stupid takes”. Freak injuries can happen, such as getting into a taxi in Miami or being chased by a wild boar, but this was different because he was playing for another team instead of preparing for the upcoming season for the team that is paying him. I have been worried about this and it happened. I could care less about the WBC, I care about my team. And I don’t care that you consider my opinion to be a “stupid take”.
Stupid take.
Definitely not a stupid take. Like it or not, players sign a (very lucrative) contract to play for a specific team. Just like when you sign a contract to work for a company in a normal day job. You and I can’t then go work for another company and potentially sacrifice productivity for the company we signed a contract with. Our personal feelings about the WBC don’t even really matter; it is clearly a conflict of interest and why wouldn’t MLB teams want to protect their own extremely well-paid employees’ productivity?
He wasn’t playing for another team when he got injured, he was jumping up and down because he was happy. His risk of injury would’ve been the same if he was jumping up and down for any other reason.
The Mets could have stopped him.
Quite a few teams quietly and not so quietly tell their players not to go.
And if an injury happened in Spring Training? Would you be calling for the cancellation of spring training?
Mets just lost Quintana for a while due to a stress reaction and when imaged a non cancerous leason.
Do fans of soccer clubs get pissed at players from their favorite clubs for playing in the world cup?
How many players have been injured during Spring Training? Should that part of baseball thus be dropped?
There is simply no logic in blaming the event for an injury. It’s playing (and preparing for) the game of baseball that leads to injuries, whether it’s in Spring Training, the regular MLB season, practicing pre-game, working out off-season, etc.
There are three players from my team in the WBC, and I wouldn’t be happy if one of them suffered an injury. But I wouldn’t be any more or less happy if the injury occurred instead during a Spring Training game.
The WBC is getting better every time around. Here’s one baseball fan hoping it keeps getting better… and better players keep participating.
I have been surprised to see the energy at these games, both from the players and fans. Going into the WBC, I was asking myself whey they even play this tournament, because I don’t know a single person who is interested in it. Myself, I have been following spring training batting lines more closely than WBC results.
But apparently there’s a target market and I’m not it! And, frankly, anything that puts “baseball” and “excitement” in the same sentence is desperately needed by the league – a month from now we will have moved onto baseball being all too often played in front of the echoing caverns of empty stadiums.
So while I won’t be watching the WBC games myself, I am much less skeptical about why they are having them in the first place.
My one gripe with the article is that it is way too dismissive of the “all about the money” angle. I really can’t fault teams one bit for not wanting to pay tens of millions of dollars to a player whose WBC injury wasn’t insured. That’s a blindingly simple business decision. Now, if the player is insured against WBC injuries, then yes, I agree that the team should lean towards player autonomy. After all, it’s not like players don’t get hurt in spring training (see Lux, Gavin)
This is me too. Well said. And maybe next time I will look forward to it more and get hyped.
Franchise values depend in large part on marketing to people who aren’t already fans. If they don’t do that marketing they don’t have the millions to begin with
I was in the pro-WBC camp.. it’s fun, and this is all a game and the point is fun, right? You get hurt there, you get hurt in ST or MLB or MiLB, what’s the difference?
The NYM fans are mad. I’m starting to see that they have a right to be. Directly or indirectly, the players salaries come from MLB fans (direct sales or cable subscriptions, whatever.) It’s not all Steve Cohens money. Most owners don’t even spend their own money.
In exchange, the MLB fans deserve the MLB players putting MLB product on the MLB field.
It’s not the same as your employer allowing or preventing you from playing softball in your spare time. These are professional baseball players playing baseball for OTHER* fans’ entertainment.
Exhibition games make money, sure, but there would not even be a WBC if not for MLB and the massive amount that fans invest in it. Is it good for the sport? It’s not like WBC is needed to raise awareness of baseball.
I don’t want to come down on the anti-fun side, but really it’s about honoring commitment to fans who want to see the fun they invested in.
(*I mean “other” in a team sense, not “other” in a nasty racial/political sense. If Diaz is being played to help the Mets win, then helping a different team win on the side and getting hurt in process would rightfully make a Mets fan mad.)
It doesn’t empower fans to give MLB franchises more control over what players can or can’t do. These are some pretty significant mental gymnastics to go through to find a narrative that justifies your conclusion.
How did you “invest” in anything? You bought some merchandise or a ticket to a game or paid for a mlb.tv subscription. You’re literally receiving goods/services for your spending dollars. None of that is an investment.
Even if we follow your (stupid) line of logic, aren’t the fans buying tickets or merchandise for the WBC “investing”? And why doesn’t their “investment” deserve a premium product.
I’m honestly embarrassed by the response of American fans to this injury. It reeks of entitlement and the refusal to understand and accept other cultures.
Kendrys Morales, May, 2010, jumps onto home plate for the Angels after hitting a game winning grand slam. That was what came to mind when I read of Diaz. Not once did I think they shouldn’t have this tournament. As mentioned, stuff happens.
I’m hoping after MLB sees the ratings from the WBC this year, along with possible improved ratings for the MLB season this year as interest carries over, we won’t even worry about having this conversation for 2027.
I thoroughly about Morales first thing also
Let it die. 10 pm start times, it’s as if they don’t want 3/4 of the country to watch.
The late games aren’t played for NorthAm viewers but for the rest of the world.
That is why they have a WBC to start with: to draw viewers and *players* from outside North Am.
Think about it: they lined up the Caribbean teams in Miami, the asian Countries in Japan, and the US, Canada, and Mexico in Arizona. All places where the bulk of the
teams fans can see them. Not everybody got that treatment but they got as many as possible.
“There are those who view the WBC as nothing more than a stunt,”
If you provide coordinates, I will provide a face punch.
Very well stated.
Players can get injured in spring training, the WBC, or riding their bike down the street to get an ice cream cone. Every day you step out of bed there is a non-zero risk of something averse happening.
Enough already! Let players play. Live your life. Live it, risks and all…
Now all I can picture is Edwin Diaz on a bike with an ice cream cone
I agree in supporting the self determination of players and thus not advocating a ban on their participation in these events. At its heart this is a labor issue and you’re right to point this out. And I do love the energy at these games and think it’s so cool that so many people around the world are into them.
At the same time I don’t have much interest in watching this or other tournaments that may come up throughout the year and wouldn’t want baseball controlled by a FIFA-style body for a million reasons. For me, so much of the greatness of baseball is the grind of the regular season and then playoffs, and while I want players on the Yankees to be able to choose whether to participate in the WBC, I’m probably always going to hope they don’t. I think it’s disingenuous to say that the risk of injury in a game where people are engaging in fierce competition isn’t higher than spring training. It’s hard to imagine the union not be being rightly pissed off on behalf of the health of its members if teams tried to shorten spring training and start the regular season earlier. That said agreed that I wouldn’t want to advocate for their employers controlling their autonomy through a ban.
Although the UCI operates both the World Championships and the World Tour, it does not actually organise most of the races in the World Tour. Some of the actual race organizers, in particular ASO (Tour de France, Vuelta a Espana, Paris-Roubaix, etc.) and RSC (Giro d’Italia, Milan San Remo, etc.) are arguably more powerful than the UCI and set their own rules for their races.
Perhaps a better precedent for level 5 is a sport like Cricket where the players are contracted by their national teams as well as by local clubs.
Injuries happen all the time in spring training weather it’s during a game or in camp. I could see the argument if the WBC was played at a different time but this is a time of year where players are hurt regardless of the WBC. The argument to hold players out just doesn’t make sense for most players. If someone is returning from injury that’s a completely different situation but for healthy players there is no real difference between WBC and spring training.
This is the first year I’ve really enjoyed watching the WBC. A lot of the teams are loaded with studs. It’s a rosterbater’s wet dream looking at the DR, Venezuelan, Japanese, and USA lineups. Even newcomers like the Czech Republic and Great Britain have put up a good fight in their games. It’s an incredible story, especially with the Czech Republic. They’re just a bunch of blue collar guys who work steady 9-5 jobs, and they happen to be solid enough baseball players to make it into this tournament! One player who hurt himself jumping up and down (an injury he could have easily suffered in some pregame workout during regular spring training, by the way) shouldn’t bring this thing to an end. For many players, like the ones on the Czech team, it’s their one shot at prime time. We cannot take that away.