When you speak of the World Baseball Classic to Royals fans, their most vivid memories will be how two of their most important players heading into the 2023 season – Bobby Witt Jr. and Brady Singer – were participants on Team USA. Bobby and Brady were going to be vital to whatever success the Royals could have in 2023, but things didn\u2019t go well.<\/p>\n
Bobby managed only three plate appearances, but he did take a walk and smacked an RBI double. Brady Singer pitched two innings in a single game and allowed four runs. Considering the time they were away from Royals\u2019 camp, it felt like they weren\u2019t getting nearly enough work, and when the season began, they both got off to incredibly slow starts that helped bury the team in its 7-22 start, which snuffed the dim playoff hopes some fans might have had prior to the beginning of the year.<\/p>\n
Over that span, Bobby slashed .253\/.297\/.453, good for a 100 wRC+, but not at all what Royals fans had hoped for his sophomore season. Singer made six starts, posting an 8.49 ERA. Both players improved significantly as the season went on, but by that point, it didn\u2019t matter for 2023. It wasn\u2019t disastrous because the 2023 Royals were, generally, not a good team, and even if they\u2019d been better, things might not have turned out any happier. But the slow starts of those two players in particular were laid at the feet of their lack of playing time in the WBC.<\/p>\n
Those two weren\u2019t the only ones to play in that WBC from the Royals, however.<\/p>\n
Vinnie Pasquantino was the starting first baseman for Team Italy. As such, he got 22 plate appearances. Pasquantino has developed a reputation for slow starts, but in 2023, he started out the year .279\/.375\/.500. He was one of the best hitters in baseball for that first month. Unfortunately, it wasn\u2019t long after that when he reinjured his shoulder and had to have season-ending surgery.<\/p>\n
So while some fans worry about Jac Caglianone playing in the 2026 WBC, I\u2019m excited about the opportunity in front of him. With Vinnie still on Team Italy, Caglianone will likely be their starting right fielder. That means he\u2019s going to get competitive-speed action for a handful of games weeks before many of his peers. If that can\u2019t help jump-start his 2026, I don\u2019t know what will.<\/p>\n
And don\u2019t worry about Bobby, Salvy, or Maikel Garcia, either. They\u2019re all almost certainly starters on their teams, too.<\/p>\n
Seth Lugo will be pitching for Puerto Rico, while Michael Wacha will pitch for Team USA. But there are far fewer reasons to be concerned about them than there ever were about Brady Singer. First of all, they\u2019re veteran pitchers who have had long careers and a lot of success. They know how to take care of business, and a couple of extra weeks of pitching in the WBC isn\u2019t going to cause them to delay their preparation for the season as it appeared to with Brady Singer, who was entering his fourth season.<\/p>\n
But the next reason is perhaps just as important. Brian Sweeney and his staff appear to be infinitely better at preparing their pitchers for success than Cal Eldred and his staff were in 2022. It is easy to forget now, but the Royals\u2019 coaching staff was the butt of many MLB jokes in 2022. Sure, Brian Sweeney was technically the pitching coach for Kansas City by the time the WBC came around in 2022, but Singer likely spent much of that offseason operating under instructions from Eldred or another coach who ultimately wasn\u2019t retained to lead the staff. Lugo and Wacha have had the ability to know who their pitching coach is all offseason and have an exceptionally solid plan in place for how to handle their WBC duties in addition to getting ready for the season.<\/p>\n
Regardless, the WBC is important<\/p>\n
Honestly, even as a Royals fan, I\u2019d support all of these guys going to participate in the WBC, even if I had real concerns about how they\u2019d perform once they got back. Life is, at its core, a series of experiences. And if you get a chance to experience something like the WBC, you have to do it – even if, as a professional baseball player, you already get to experience things most of us only dream about. We only get one life, and it would be cruel to ask them to throw away a chance like this just because it might make it infinitesimally less likely that we\u2019ll get to watch our team hoist a World Series trophy at the end of the year.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s more true than ever this year, as the 2023 WBC was such a classic that this iteration has generated more buzz than any I can remember. With all the nonsense about player insurance and teams telling their players they aren\u2019t allowed to participate for one reason or another, there\u2019s no telling how much longer this event could continue to go on. They\u2019ve got to take advantage of it while they can.<\/p>\n
And, to be clear, the WBC should go on. It might be awful to lose a key player to injury before the season even begins because he was participating in the tournament, but if baseball is going to continue to thrive as we push into the second quarter of the 21st century, it\u2019s going to need to gain global appeal. It has a head start over a league like the NFL because baseball is already incredibly popular in many Latin American and Asian countries, but that\u2019s all the more reason to not let that advantage lapse while the NFL continues to expand its own global footprint. MLB needs the WBC almost as badly as the WBC needs it, and I\u2019m excited so many Royals will be participating this time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you speak of the World Baseball Classic to Royals fans, their most vivid memories will be how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":594253,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2387],"tags":[5,936,2123,55,77357,2596,2595,4,252,39420],"class_list":{"0":"post-594252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-royals","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-kansas","10":"tag-kansas-city","11":"tag-kansas-city-royals","12":"tag-kansas-city-royals-analysis","13":"tag-kansascity","14":"tag-kansascityroyals","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-royals","17":"tag-royals-editorials-reactions"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116137738088617096","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594252","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=594252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/594252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/594253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=594252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=594252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=594252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}