Who To Root for in the World Baseball Classic: Pool D

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.