I unashamedly love the World Baseball Classic, and have since attending the inaugural event in 2006. There, I watched South Africa almost pull off a stunning upset over Canada, then Canada beating the US at Chase Field. To be fair, it has taken the baseball world in general a bit of time to catch up with that affection. There has been grumbling, such as over players getting hurt while participating (or in the case of Edwin Diaz, while celebrating). But the last tournament was a roaring success: you don\u2019t get many more iconic moments than Shohei Ohtani striking out Mike Trout to win it all. Though for me, Team GB\u2019s victory over Colombia is the best game I\u2019ve attended in the past decade.<\/p>\n
Sadly, there won\u2019t be the chance to experience any such excitement at Chase Field this year, as the tournament will be bypassing Arizona (the maintenance at the park may have been a factor). But there will still be a chance to follow the World Baseball Classic in its other locations, and there are no shortage of Diamondbacks taking part for their countries. It\u2019ll take place across the country and in Japan, from March 5-17, leading up to the final in Miami. Attention in the early stages will be focused on Group B, which includes the USA and Mexico – always a raucous match-up, that game is already sold out – plus Italy, Brazil and Great Britain.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s a look at who might appear for the various teams. Note: these are not all confirmed at this point, as the full rosters won\u2019t be revealed until next week – February 5th according to reports. But some players have already stated they will be taking part. The list below (largely sourced from @dbacksprospectz on Twitter) includes definites, possibles and also some former Diamondbacks of interest, in parentheses.<\/p>\n
USA: Corbin Carroll, Merrill Kelly<\/p>\n
Carroll\u2019s presence on the American roster was announced barely after the end of the regular season, back on November 13th – the same day as another 30-30 guy last season was named to the team, in Pete Crow-Armstrong. Carroll said<\/a>, \u201cIt was not a hard decision. I couldn\u2019t be more excited. It\u2019s going to be awesome.\u201d He could also have represented Taiwan, through his mother. Kelly is a possible, having pitched for Team USA in the last tournament – indeed, he started the championship game against Japan. But the American rotation figures to be deeper this time, headed by the double-headed Cy Young beast of Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes. There may not be room for Merrill.<\/p>\n Dominican Republic: Geraldo Perdomo, Ketel Marte<\/p>\n Marte was part of the 2023 roster for the Dominican Republic, although the team did not make it out of the first round after going 2-2. Ketel went 2-for-8 with a double across two of those games, but given his strong performance last year, he is a cert to see more action this time around. He\u2019ll be joined by team-mate Perdomo, who will be making his first appearance in the WBC after his breakout season. Invited by manager Albert Pujols, Gerry said<\/a> he was willing to \u201chelp his national team in any capacity from being the bat boy to driving the ambulance.\u201d Let\u2019s hope he does more than the former, and less than the latter.<\/p>\n Puerto Rico: Nolan Arenado, Brandyn Garcia, Adrian Del Castillo<\/p>\n Arenado is an interesting case, having switched allegiance. In 2017 and 2023, he played for Team USA: Nolan helped America win the title in the former tournament, and in the most recent version, tied with Mookie Betts for the lead in hits, batting .385 across the seven games. Though born in Newport Beach, like Carroll he has dual nationality for WBC purposes, courtesy of mother, Millie. With Carlos Correa likely playing third for Puerto Rico, Arenado may well see time at first-base instead. This could explain his recent Instagram post which caused some reaction, after it showed Arenado taking ground-balls there.<\/p>\n Canada: Michael Soroka, Mitch Bratt, (Matt Davidson, Josh Naylor)<\/p>\n Bratt, who came to the D-backs from the Rangers in the Merrill Kelly trade, was part of the Canada roster in 2023, but it did not go well. He started against the United States, and was charged with six runs while retiring only one batter, Kyle Tucker. At the time, though, he was a raw 19-year-old who had never pitched above A-ball. After the game, he said<\/a>, \u201cI could\u2019ve done a better job there. But hopefully I\u2019ll face [Trout] again and hopefully it\u2019ll be a different result.\u201d Perhaps that opportunity might arise either in the tournament this year – I mean, Canada owes him a chance at redemption – or in the major leagues this summer.<\/p>\n Next time out, we\u2019ll look at the remaining teams, headlined by the Venezuelan contingent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I unashamedly love the World Baseball Classic, and have since attending the inaugural event in 2006. There, I…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":542886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,3537],"class_list":{"0":"post-542885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115974675395319771","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=542885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}