{"id":629122,"date":"2026-03-18T00:58:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:58:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/629122\/"},"modified":"2026-03-18T00:58:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T00:58:17","slug":"world-baseball-classic-can-go-from-hit-to-home-run-with-a-few-fixes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/629122\/","title":{"rendered":"World Baseball Classic can go from hit to home run with a few fixes"},"content":{"rendered":"

MIAMI \u2014 The World Baseball Classic is a hit with players and fans<\/a>. The attendance is way up, the energy and enthusiasm are through the loanDepot park roof and the vibe can\u2019t be beat. The event has grown from a weak groundout two decades ago to at least a figurative double \u2014 but naturally, we still have a couple of small tweaks to make it even better<\/a> (more on those below).<\/p>\n

Raucous sellout crowds are energizing the players \u2014 or is it the other way around? And just because Team USA players aren\u2019t dancing like the Dominican and Venezuelan stars, that doesn\u2019t mean they aren\u2019t feeling it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t dance a lick, like [Fernando] Tatis can,\u201d Bryce Harper said the other day, \u201cbut I can have fun playing this game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Team USA players are way into it, even the inactive ones. Tigers superstar starter Tarik Skubal was one-and-done<\/a> as a Team USA player in his free agent year (and don\u2019t blame him, impending free agent pitchers almost never participate at all). Yet, he returned, driving 4\u00b9\/\u2082 hours through a horrendous Florida-style thunderstorm to make it to the bench for the semifinal and final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 The World Baseball Classic is a hit with players and fans. The attendance is way up,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629123,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,4,185,430,428,4819,8814,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-629122","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-sports-columnists","12":"tag-sports-plus","13":"tag-team-usa","14":"tag-venezuela","15":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116247469797661363","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629122","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=629122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629122\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}