The much anticipated 2026 World Baseball Classic will be starting in early March with teams finalizing their rosters as the tournament approaches. The Pirates\u2019 centerfielder Oneil Cruz is the latest addition to the Dominican Republic team.<\/p>\n
Cruz will be participating in his first ever WBC as he joins a loaded Dominican lineup. The Pirates\u2019 centerfielder had hinted at the possibility of participating during Pirates\u2019 Fest, but it was officially confirmed this week.<\/p>\n
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Since coming into the league Cruz has spent his winters working out back in his native Dominican Republic, and has close ties to several of the players on the team.<\/p>\n
\u201cThree or four days after the season or when I got to the Dominican, I started working right away with Wilton Guerrero, Vladimir Guerrero Sr.\u2019s brother, down in the Dominican,\u201d Cruz said. \u201cHe helped me a lot with the outfield stuff and hitting stuff. Basically no break.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the annual Pirates\u2019 Fest, Cruz acknowledged his shortcomings during the 2025 season, stating that he felt that he had no time to relax this offseason and had to get to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe season that I had last year, it was not my best season,\u201d Cruz said. \u201cI just went home, no time to relax. I went right to work. Just to work on the stuff that I was having trouble with last year and work on my body again. No time to relax. Just focus on what I need to do to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cruz is one of the most physically gifted players in MLB, but Pirates\u2019 fans have been waiting for him to take the next step in his career and really come into his prime. Being on this stacked Dominican team could be a great opportunity for him to be around incredible talent and get some valued experience playing in a high stakes tournament.<\/p>\n
The Dominican Republic last won the WBC in 2013 and with the roster they have this year are going to be hard to beat as they\u2019re one of the best teams in international play. Players like\u00a0Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr. and Seranthony Dom\u00ednguez are just a few of the top talent that will be apart of this Dominican roster.<\/p>\n
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Fellow Pirate Paul Skenes will be representing Team USA during the WBC as the Americans will be looking to win the title on home soil.<\/p>\n
The Dominican Republic is full of fire power throughout their lineup and rotation, and Cruz should be a welcomed addition to an already stacked roster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The much anticipated 2026 World Baseball Classic will be starting in early March with teams finalizing their rosters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2402],"tags":[5,50,1888,920,778,4,1330,877,10,776,64,4297,2539,7966,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-545879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pittsburgh-pirates","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cincinnati-reds","10":"tag-dominican-republic","11":"tag-fernando-tatis-jr","12":"tag-miami","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-oneil-cruz","15":"tag-paul-skenes","16":"tag-pirates","17":"tag-pittsburgh","18":"tag-pittsburgh-pirates","19":"tag-pittsburghpirates","20":"tag-seranthony-dominguez","21":"tag-vladimir-guerrero","22":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115984415299915441","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545879","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=545879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}