How to Improve the WBC
I want to like the World Baseball Classic. I want to get into, I do. Really!
Major League Baseball wants to grow the sport. An international tournament is an ideal way to do that. One needn’t look far for successful models. World Cup soccer and Olympic hockey, for instance, both draw the casual American audience to the television. There’s something engaging about a country rooting for the name on the front of a jersey in a tribal and nationalistic way. The passion and joy of the Dominican Republic team has made for compelling theater in past tournaments.
I want to really look forward to this event. I want to fill out a bracket after reviewing Craig Edwards’ WBC roster analysis, and put some money down. I want to. But I can’t. Not in its current shape and form.
I do believe Rob Manfred is right to want to continue the event despite reports of its potential demise.
Rob Manfred, on rumors this will be the last World Baseball Classic: "I intend to keep the WBC alive and going as long as I'm commissioner."
— Jeff Passan (@JeffPassan) February 21, 2017
I do believe baseball is wise to grow the sport, internationally, where it can. I do believe there is some growth opportunity with regard to the event, but like a worthwhile flip-for-profit project, it requires some rehabilitation.
So let’s fix this thing, shall we? I don’t think we can fix it in time for this year — the tournament begins on March 6 — but if there’s to be a tournament in 2021, it could be better.
A Mid-Summer (World Baseball) Classic
The big thing, to me, is where the event occurs on the calendar. Others have proposed moving the Classic to the middle of the summer, which makes a lot of sense. Ideally, baseball would borrow NHL’s approach to the Olympics. The NHL takes a hiatus in the middle of the season, forgoing the All-Star Game every four years. Baseball could employ a similar model, with the All-Star game and its declining ratings replaced every four years by the WBC.
There are a number of problems caused by holding the event in March. Players are just getting into shape, college basketball tournaments are underway and draw sizable media and public focus, and baseball fans might be more interested in the goings-on of their team’s spring-training camp than WBC competition. There are too many distractions. Clearing some space in July, though, before the NFL season begins and after the NBA season concludes, would allow the WBC — and baseball and its best players — to reside alone in the media spotlight.
Would moving the event present scheduling challenges? Sure. But the NHL still found a way to complete a full schedule in 2013-14.
Compel (or Coerce) the Best Players to Play
In this once-every-four-years event, Mike Trout and Clayton Kershaw are absent from the U.S. roster. Quite simply, for the sake of legitimacy, the best players need to play. I understand the injury risk that comes with extra games, but if this is an event that can help develop the sport’s international appeal, then small injury risks should be outweighed by a greater good: growth of the game.
Play the Event in a Host Country
Like any well-intentioned international sporting event, countries should bid to hold the games and be forced to engage in spending on white-elephant projects to build facilities and event space… Or, OK, maybe not all that. But allowing a country to take ownership of the event — an idea for which Kevin Kaduk of Yahoo! advocated back in 2013 — would allow for all athletes to be gathered in one space, where a sort of opening ceremonies could occur. That would be a positive for marketing and travel tourism.
Change the Format
The event is much too dependent on tiebreakers due to the round-robin format of the first two rounds.
A modest proposal: perhaps the WBC should borrow a page from an underrated event — the NCAA college baseball tournament — and employ an opening round of four, four-team pools where clear winners emerge through double-elimination play. Such a format adds elements of strategy in deciding when to hold or employ an ace pitcher. The semifinals and finals could be, say, a best-of-three series. The maximum number of games a team could play would be 10 in a two-week period.
Eliminate Pitch Limits
I’m aware of the Tommy John epidemic and interested in smarter ways to evaluate fatigue and workload to better keep pitchers healthy. But the pitch limits put in place automatically erode credibility from the event. Pitchers are limited to 65 pitches in the first round, 80 in the second, and 95 in following rounds. Jay Jaffe has everything you need to know about the WBC and rules changes here.
Yes, managers and coaches involved should have clear understanding of what constitutes pitcher abuse. And they should be expected to act responsibility. But if the event were played at a different time of year, such as in the middle of the season, pitchers would also not be in the process of stretching out their arms. They would be in midseason form and capable of shouldering a greater workload.
If you build it differently, more people will come out for the WBC. People would tune in for Kershaw working into the seventh inning of a meaningful game against the Dominican Republic, in the middle of summer, with national bragging rights at stake. At a time when All-Star viewership is declining and when the game wants to increased exposure internationally, dramatic changes to the WBC are worth exploring and, possibly, implementing. If the event is worth holding, it’s worth being done in as compelling manner as possible.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
Host Country: Sounds cool. But I think MLB wants guaranteed attendance money. US, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, and Canada could do this pretty easily. Puerto Rico and Cuba to a lesser extent. Puerto Rico only has 6 teams in their league. Italy and the Netherlands would be awesome, but I doubt they have enough high caliber stadiums. Maybe having the WBC throughout the European continent would be awesome.
July: This would take too much time away from baseball for the players who are not participating. And it would lengthen the season, which is already seeming too long as the World Series sometimes creeps into November.
“US, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, and Canada could do this pretty easily.”
That’s all you need. Probably more realistically, have it cycle between 1) US 2) Far East 3) other western hemisphere.
Netherlands has three stadiums that they can expand to about 15000-30000 seats. The fourth biggest stadium is this: https://tinyurl.com/jf6t25b
I’d vote for the Netherlands. Great place, great people.
“July: This would take too much time away from baseball for the players who are not participating.”
This is true, but it also falls under the compel/coerce category. Currently, players can avoid the WBC and instead play in ST games. If there’s no viable alternative, and they’re already in game shape and want to avoid rust, perhaps Kershaw/Trout/etc would be more likely to suit up.
Es un tema complicado, debido a que hay diversos factores que entran en juego cuando se habla del Clásico Mundial de Béisbol.
These suggestions are very utopian in that each has more downside than upside for MLB. The teams would be howling if the league tried to unilaterally impose all of these changes for 2021.
One additional idea I really like: centralizing all rounds and games to a single stadium/city to create a weeks-long event out of the thing, then rotating the site every 4 years. A few thus-far under-utilized WBC sites I would consider: Milwaukee, Houston, Toronto, Seoul. Plus you have the predictable places like LA, SD, Miami, Phoenix, and Tokyo.
I’m not against any of this article’s ideas or finding other ways to improve the tournament over the long run. The most important thing that people around baseball need to keep in perspective is that the tournament is extremely young by international sport competition standards. Outside of the big 10 countries where baseball is a major sport, the league needs to exercise some patience and give the tournament time to grow. We’ve already seen that growth happening during the WBC era in some places. For a game that’s so slow to change, I hope they don’t rush a decision on this.
Travis, you have been a miraculous addition to the FanGraphs staff, and I have enjoyed every one of your posts — until now. The WBC is a joke.
I pretty much agree. My thoughts are similar to the DH: kill it. Kill it now. It is not legitimate with the amount of players not participating, and the pro game here, has to be so compromised to make it work, to say nothing more about the justifiable reason the best of the best may opt to not play. A nice concept. But that doesn’t mean it is legitimate.
We Dodger fans agree: kill it now.
What a well thought out and thoroughly cited rebuttal.
The winning country players will receive no hard caps on bonus pools during international signing period.
on the other hand, that might make things too interesting…
What do the U.S., Canada, or Puerto Rico get if they win?
How about a mid-year WBC, some kind of expanded week-long something in the other three years (whether it be an expanded contest or an expanded rest), and account for that time by returning to 154-game schedules?!
Because you can’t cut the number of games in the season without also proportionately cutting player paychecks, and the players absolutely refuse to take the necessary pay cut.
Absolute nonsense. Of course you can.
No, you can’t. Salaries are currently budgeted for a 162 game season. If you cut it to a 154 game season you have to cut the salaries because there are eight games worth of income lost per team.
It always amazes me that there are people here who have zero understanding of business.
To quote the current Commissioner: “You want to work less, usually you get paid less.”
You’re assuming that player/owner distribution of revenues remains the same.
Now, if you’re saying “the owners will only do this if their revenue remains the same, which will *then* force players to take a pay cut,” I agree that’s the most likely scenario. But that’s different from saying “the only way to do this is if the players take a pay cut.” It’s not.
I don’t mind the pre-season WBC although I pay little attention to it. I oppose trying to turn it into a World Cup or Olympics type event and especially the mid-season idea. The season is long enough and the players get little enough rest as it is. Comparisons to the NHL are specious. They play only half the number of games as MLB and the compressed schedules in Olympic seasons or Canada Cup seasons (like this one) are kind of brutal. Also, there’s no real equivalent of starting pitchers in ice hockey (players that can only play one game in 5).
I also don’t know what exactly the purpose of trying to turn the WBC into a World Cup or Olympic type event would be. I’m not really into the nationalism thing and I don’t think we need another money-grabbing extravaganza with special stadiums and taxpayer rip offs (like the Olympics and World Cup).
If it happens I’ll “protest” by not watching. Just like I do with the Olympics.
I’d like it to be EUFA style with actual MLB teams against other clubs from other nations sprinkled into the season. It would never happen but that would be fun as the competition rises in other nations.
While that would be fun, let’s be honest. Only the Japanese and maybe the South-Korean leagues would come close. I live in Amsterdam and we have the ‘best team of Europe’ but playing against MLB teams would suck…
Understood. I’m probably 100 years away from this solution and the WBC will be dead by then. I think it would be wonderful to see the Dominican, Cuba, Japan, etc etc with high quality leagues filled with their own players. With some cross-over between continents. The issue is all the money is tied up in MLB/US contracts/teams.
Yeah the Dutch league is somewhere between A and AA level form what I gather. On a sidenote, I wouldn’t call Pirates the best team in Europe because they won the last European Cup. Neptunus won the year before and the last 4 national championships.
No way middle of the season would work. You can’t take multiple weeks off in the middle. WS will be in December! And players who are not participating will just be sitting around for weeks at a time. I like the idea that pitchers are already stretched out and hitters are in live game mode, but the scheduling could never work.
Plus, no MLB team would let its players participate for fear of an injury during the stretch run. You think the Dodgers want Kershaw making 3-4 extra starts (depending on how many games USA plays) when they could have him saving those bullets for the 3-4 extra starts they want him to be able to make in the postseason? If he pitched a full season (33-34 starts), had 3 starts (real ones, as you mentioned) in WBC and 4 starts in postseason, you’re talking 40+ starts in a year, probably around or even over 300 innings. No way Dodgers risk their three hundred million dollar asset like that.
I thought this was a pretty lazy post. Most of these ideas are not new or creative. I think the biggest fallacy is that the WBC needs to be “fixed.”
As Brett W said, the tournament is very new and growing, but already it is an extremely popular event outside the US, especially in Asia. Hopefully you will take the time to watch a game or two from the Seoul or Tokyo rounds and observe the passion and excitement of the crowds. Moving the tournament to a central location would deprive at least one of these fan bases of the opportunity to cheer for their home team. As it is, maybe the biggest problem is that the final round is in LA where the tournament has the smallest impact. Imagine a Japan-Korea or Japan-DR final in the Tokyo Dome!
As for the players, of course it would be nice to see guys like Trout, Bryant and Harper anchoring the US lineup, but do you really want these guys playing if they don’t want to be playing. And if the MLB is to compel players to play in this event, how should they do that? Fine players who are invited but turn down the invitation? Negotiate it into the next CBA somehow? Good luck. I’d much rather watch excited players who want to be there than slightly more talented players who have no interest. The players’ emotions are what makes the WBC fun to watch.
As a response to the last part of your post, mlb could offer incentives to its own players for participating. There would still be those who decline, but I’m sure some players would love the opportunity to get some extra cash, especially those who are pre-arb/pre-fa
MLB loses enough money each year on the WBC as it is…
I think I’d like to see the WBC in the fall, right after the World Series. Maybe move the season up by a week or so and shorten spring training to fit it into the same timeframe.
The WBC may be well intentioned, but it doesn’t seem to have much real potential to “grow the sport”. The countries that are pretty good already love baseball, the countries that are not…do not love baseball…and watching a bunch of American’s who have familial or religious ties to your country every 4 years isn’t going to engender any real amount of persistent interest.
It really doesn’t seem like very many people care about the event. Players obviously don’t care much, many sit out every time. Fans generally don’t care that much, they only show up to “home games”…look at the attendance when a host team isn’t involved in the game, almost no one shows up (and they are listing tickets sold, not actual attendance). Attendance in the US is okay mostly because they put it in Arizona where a lot of people have already traveled to watch their own team’s spring training…if those people were not already there, attendance would be a small fraction of what it is.
Until more countries have professional domestic leagues, there is just no reason to have a WBC….as baseball is a North American, Caribbean, and Japanese/Korean sport…not one that enjoys world-wide interest. And there is no reason to think a few games every 4 years are really going to change that.
“American’s who have familial or religious ties to your country every 4 years isn’t going to engender any real amount of persistent interest.” – This is basically only true for Israel and Italy. While Israel doesn’t have a big baseball presence, Italy has a competitive baseball league that Junior Guerra played in before making it in the MLB.
Watch the late innings of this game and tell me that the players (and the fans) don’t care (https://youtu.be/hQvd115J0bY?t=2h11m25s).
Marlins Park also had anywhere from 15-30k in 2013. In 2009 Dodger Stadium was packed for the semifinal and championship games.
Look this is a way for the baseball to showcase the worldwide talent that it has. Every four years we get to see the MLB, KBO, NPB, CPBL and other leagues bests compete and if you are baseball fan I don’t get how you don’t see the appeal of that. In Japan, the WBC is so popular that water pressure dropped during the 2006 final: http://asia.nikkei.com/Life-Arts/Life/Big-in-Asia-but-World-Baseball-Classic-still-seeks-US-home-run.
The WBC helps GROW domestic baseball appeal in foreign countries. Baseball can’t just wish and hope that foreign countries take up an interest and develop pro domestic leagues, it has to demonstrate how fun the game can be on an international stage. North America, Caribbean, South America, Europe, East Asia (you forgot Taiwan), Oceania, and beginning in Africa (South Africa has some up and coming players in the minors) sounds pretty damn international to me.
The WBC plays a very important role in getting baseball exposure in the Netherlands, especially now the Baseball World Cup is gone.
No, no, no to playing it in the summer.
I want to see my Sawx, not “Panama vs Upper Volta” where the Panama team is made up of Americans who qualify because they once wore Panama hats (that hail from Ecuador, but never mind).
Panama currently has 6 players in the major leagues and a good number of minor leaguers as well. The get massive crowds for high school baseball games: http://deadspin.com/youth-baseball-games-in-panama-are-rowdier-than-anythin-1792532613
Mariano Rivera, Rod Carew, and Carlos Lee were all Panamanian.
Why not have a preliminary round before the season starts, similar to how it is now, but then have the semifinals and finals in place of the All-Star game? 4 teams, semifinal games on Tuesday, then a three game series Thursday-Saturday, and back to regular baseball on Monday. It wouldn’t be hard to fill in the lost 3 days either before or after the season.
Figuring out the scheduling of a potential mid-summer WBC doesn’t strike me as particularly difficult. Baseball would have qualifying rounds during spring training, start the season a week earlier than usual, and have a two-week event in the middle replacing All-Star week. Is that really so cumbersome an arrangement to endure once every four years? The only question in my mind is how the change from spring to summer would impact player attendance. Suddenly, potential WBC participants are looking at a rare 2 week break in the middle of a long season and might prefer to rest rather than engage in active competition. Some disingenuous types could even abuse the WBC and use it as a way to just stay in game shape by only wanting to play an inning or two here and there, which would harm the legitimacy of the competition.
My opinion is the event’s placement in the baseball calendar is its biggest hurdle. I don’t think March has worked out very well and I think July would help. I think baseball should concern itself less with attracting the best players, because you can’t breed patriotism, guys either want to play for their country or they don’t.
Getting good players to play is the toughest part of this. It isn’t just about the players but the teams they play for. Perhaps providing some insurance or something to the teams for the risk of injury to high valued players. However, even that isn’t going to be great if Kershaw sprains an ankle or something and the Dodgers lose him for a couple of starts and end up losing the division.
The problem is we have placed so much value in sports in our domestic leagues. Even the NBA has trouble getting all the players to come out for the Olympics. Other sports like rugby union place a high value on international competition over professional clubs, so much that the professional season continues while the best players go off for national teams, but that probably comes from being a sport that was basically amateur until the 1990s.
Another problem with interest in the WBC is that some of the teams are terrible. It might be a thrill for some of these players to get to play against MLB players, it is mostly not fun to watch. US against the Dominican Republic is fun, but US against Columbia is probably not going to be.
What if they broke it up into 2 rounds? Qualifers in the Spring and the Championship rounds during the AS break. Might still have trouble getting guys for the first round, but should get buy for the second round.
Additionally, if the ASG were replaced by the WBC every 4 years, you could have an international home run derby.
Maybe one way to grow the sport internationally is to not make it so prohibitively expensive. A quick search on the WBC website finds that the cheapest (worst) ticket in Mexico is $28/game, when you buy all six games. In Tokyo (which I know is an obscenely expensive place to live) the cheapest non standing ticket is $35. I could check others, but I would assume that the prices are similarly high for terrible seats. The cheapest non-standing tickets in Miami, conversely start at $15. How does this make sense?
Basic economics. Supply and demand. “Whatever the market will bear.”
I like the overall concept…how about this: drop from 162 games to 154 as many have advocated (for other reasons too) and slot in the WBC in the all-star break as you suggested. I would re-structure this way…same 12 teams make it with 4 NCAA “Regionals” using double elimination. Only the top 4 teams advance to the “Final Four” which use the same double-elimination format. The max-possible number of games for any one team would be 10, and it could be done in 10-days without the need for any team to play multiple games in a day (maybe you stretch it to 12 days for TV purposes).
The extra days off from the 154 game schedule would more than make up for a 10-12 day WBC tournament and you aren’t extending the season at all.
we clone ichiro and put one ichiro on every team
Best idea so far
If they want to grow it elsewhere, they need to focus on the “elsewhere”. The next 3 should be hosted solely in a foreign nation. They also care more because, even without Trout/Kershaw, these are the best players they’ll see and their local stars are playing on the biggest platform they’ll see.
There’s a big problem with suspending the season for three weeks that doesn’t exist in the NHL, though. It’d push the World Series all the way to the last week of November, which could have weather issues depending on which teams made it to the World Series that year. While some MLB stadiums in colder climates have retractable roofs, not all of them do, and it’s also not feasible to play an entire championship series in a neutral warm weather site like the NFL does with the Super Bowl. Just imagine trying to play a Rockies / Red Sox World Series in late November!