Early last season, Pittsburgh Pirates video coordinator Kevin Roach approached the team’s young ace, Paul Skenes, and asked if he was interested in pitching for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic.

Spend any time at all around Skenes and you’ll know he’s exactly the type of person who’d want to represent the United States on the world stage. Before he was a Cy Young winner and the best right-hander in baseball, Skenes was an Air Force cadet who once bolted from baseball practice to ream out peers who weren’t standing during the national anthem.

But Skenes is also precisely the type of pitcher who historically has turned down opportunities to play for Team USA: an American ace.

Mighty as the WBC’s momentum has grown, one of the tournament’s most obvious holes to this point has been how many of the game’s greatest American pitchers haven’t participated. Justin Verlander. Max Scherzer. Zack Greinke. Chris Sale. Jacob deGrom. Gerrit Cole. In years past, Team USA operated with a “B” team pitching staff as the country’s stars — or their parent clubs — chose the perceived safety of spring training back fields rather than risk injury while facing Samurai Japan. So, the question Roach had for Skenes had often returned a disappointing answer.

“Would you want to pitch for Team USA?” Roach asked.

“Heck yeah, I would,” Skenes replied. “Come on!”

It wasn’t so much a choice made in the moment as it was one Skenes manifested at 14, watching Adam Jones rob Manny Machado in the 2017 WBC. “That was something I decided a long time ago,” Skenes said from Pirates camp last week. “If I had a chance to do it, I would.”

Roach, who works with Team USA, messaged manager Mark DeRosa, and before long, the team had announced New York Yankees captain Aaron Judge and Skenes as the hitting and pitching pillars of its WBC roster. Landing Skenes “put the world on notice that we want our best representing Team USA,” said the team’s general manager, Michael Hill. More of the best kept coming until, for the first time, it had a pitching staff to match its star-studded lineup. Skenes and Tarik Skubal form a two-headed beast of reigning Cy Young winners. Logan Webb and Joe Ryan round out the rotation. The back end of the bullpen is occupied by Mason Miller, David Bednar and Garrett Whitlock. Even 37-year-old retiree Clayton Kershaw is in for mop-up duty. At long last, the U.S. pitching staff truly resembles a collection of the country’s best arms.

“Wow,” Bednar said.

“Insane,” Ryan said.

“It’s gonna be fun,” Skenes said.

Three years ago, the U.S. starters were Merrill Kelly, Lance Lynn, Adam Wainwright, Kyle Freeland and Miles Mikolas. Samurai Japan had Shohei Ohtani, Yu Darvish, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shota Imanaga and Roki Sasaki. No pitcher on the U.S. staff received even a down-ballot Cy Young vote the previous season. Between the lack of star talent and usage restrictions,  The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal wrote, it “raises a frequent and existential question regarding the WBC: If the U.S. cannot give full effort, why bother?”

When DeRosa began recruiting for the 2026 WBC, which kicks off stateside on March 6, he sensed a groundswell of interest from American players. Perhaps that’s only natural when the lasting image from the previous WBC is Ohtani striking out U.S. captain Mike Trout to win it. In 2023, DeRosa cast a wide net, phoning one player after another. This time, he took as many calls as he made. Not every pitcher said yes, but enough did to challenge the narrative that, as DeRosa put it, “for whatever reason, in the United States, our best arms don’t show up.” The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh calculated that, compared to the Team USA pitching staffs from the past four WBCs, this one is at least 71 percent better in prior-year WAR and 47 percent better in projected WAR.

Prior to injury, Zack Wheeler was one of manager Mark DeRosa’s top targets for Team USA’s 2026 rotation. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)

DeRosa began the process of building his dream U.S. pitching staff by writing down three names: Skenes, Skubal and Zack Wheeler. Skenes was immediately in. Wheeler was in until undergoing shoulder surgery. Skubal was a complicated case. He’s in line for a free-agent megadeal this fall. Would the tournament be worth it to him? DeRosa and Team USA pitching coach Andy Pettitte kept in contact with him throughout the season.

Skubal had the itch. He didn’t want to miss out. Early in the offseason, at the Major League Baseball Players’ Association’s meetings in Scottsdale, Ariz., Skubal peppered Skenes about his WBC preparation. “I took him aside (and asked), ‘Hey, what’s your plan? What’s your vibe? What do you got on all this?’” Skubal recalled. Skenes walked away thinking there was a 50/50 shot Skubal would be on the WBC roster. There was still a lot for Skubal, agent Scott Boras and the Detroit Tigers to iron out.

In the meantime,  DeRosa fortified the late innings. In November, Miller, the flame-throwing San Diego Padres reliever, was in Hawaii with his wife, Jordan. They’d already discussed the possibility of him pitching for Team USA, so when DeRosa phoned to gauge his interest, Miller had a response ready: “Of course.” Bednar, the Yankees closer, got a call, too. “I was fortunate enough to get asked to do it again,” said Bednar, the only returning pitcher from the 2023 U.S. roster. “It was a pretty easy yes.”

The more stars committed, the easier the recruiting became.

In mid-December, Skenes heard from Skubal again. He was in.

“He was pretty fired up,” Skenes said.

“I take a ton of pride in being able to wear the USA across the chest,” Skubal said. “It’s something I’ve never had the opportunity to do. … I think (the U.S.) is the best country in the world. It will also be another really special thing in my career, just being able to share the clubhouse with all those guys that are elite, at the top of today’s game. They’re all superstars. Getting to all come together for one common goal will be pretty special.”

There’s an inherent conflict between Team USA’s championship aspirations and MLB teams’ preparation for the long slog of the regular season. This has at times led to friction over parent clubs prohibiting pitchers with recent arm injuries from participating in the WBC or, for those begrudgingly approved, placing them under onerous usage limits.

Would the Pirates’ hopes of carving a path to the postseason this year be safer if they kept Skenes at spring training and encased him in bubble wrap? Yes. Would protecting him be a detriment to baseball fans worldwide? Undoubtedly. So sending Skenes to the WBC brings on a blend of emotions: “Supporting the greater good of the game, and having a pit in our stomach,” Pirates GM Ben Cherington said. The event has exploded in popularity and become increasingly more important to players. Cherington said he wants to support that, trusting players to prepare properly for the WBC — and the season.

“Of course,” he said, “you’re going to be holding your breath a bit through it.”

Similar arrangements were struck between pitchers and decision-makers across the sport. Starters tweaked their offseason routines to be on the mound for early spring-training games, rather than ramping up slowly with simulation games. Relievers will be at full gas a few weeks early. Padres GM A.J. Preller encouraged Miller to work with the Padres and Team USA pitching coaches and strength staffs to ensure all were on the same page as he ramped up his throwing program. Miller appreciated Preller’s support. “Obviously, from a team’s perspective, there’s not a ton of upside,” Miller said. “They’re focused on the (season). I’m not naive enough to ignore that. But it’s kind of a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”

In San Francisco, Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey, who won gold at the 2017 WBC, asked Webb to reconsider his choice and pitch for Team USA later in his career. But Webb already punted once. In 2023, he was a late omission from the U.S. roster, choosing to stay in Giants camp instead. “Obviously, they have their thoughts about it,” Webb said last month. “I think that’s known. But at the end of the day, it’s my decision.”

The decision Webb made, like Skenes and Skubal and Ryan and the rest, to pitch for Team USA, illustrates how far the pendulum has swung in the past decade. In 2017, New York Mets starter Noah Syndergaard declined an invitation to pitch in the WBC and said, “Ain’t nobody make it to the Hall of Fame and win the World Series playing in the WBC.” That still is true. But, more and more, American pitchers are deciding it sounds like a good time anyway.

— The Athletic’s Dan Hayes, Cody Stavenhagen, Andrew Baggarly and Brendan Kuty contributed reporting.