told the Associated Press<\/a> that the WBC is \u201can ideal opportunity\u201d for MLB if it decides to seriously pursue more midseason events. On Tuesday, Venezuela won the sixth edition of the WBC, which generated the most excitement and viewers in the tournament\u2019s 20-year history: close to 10.8 million tuned in to watch the final game on Fox and Fox Deportes.<\/p>\nMLB would have to reach agreement with the players\u2019 union to bring the WBC to July, and the league would also have to account for any potential changes to its All-Star Game schedule with the game\u2019s television rights-holder. Fox has the TV rights to the All-Star Game through 2028. That year, the league hopes it will be able to send its players to the Olympics in Los Angeles as part of an extended midsummer break, a test-run of sorts for other midseason events that could follow.<\/p>\n
The Players Association has yet to discuss a WBC schedule change with players and declined comment. The World Baseball Softball Confederation, the international governing body of baseball that also has a say in the WBC, will be a part of the conversation as well.<\/p>\n
Boston Red Sox manager Alex Cora, who previously served as Team Puerto Rico\u2019s general manager, sees another potential hold-up: a midseason WBC would require other international leagues to adjust their schedules as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to call Japan and Mexico and ask them if they can be part of it,\u201d Cora said Thursday during spring training. \u201cBeing a GM of that thing, that\u2019s the biggest obstacle. It\u2019s not the WBC of big leaguers. There\u2019s Japan, Mexico, Italy, Australia. Unless you reduce the teams and make it only big leaguers, it\u2019s going to be very hard to make it a week of WBC (in the middle of the season).\u201d<\/p>\n
A midseason WBC could help solve one problem the tournament encounters early: readiness. Spring training is a time for pitchers to build up pitch counts and for hitters to start catching up to 100 mph fastballs. Though the WBC produced great games, it\u2019s possible more players would be in top form during a summer tournament.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery country is behind, pitching-wise and offensively,\u201d Cora said of the current set-up. \u201cCan we make it better? I don\u2019t know how, to be honest with you, because this is a world tournament, and unless you stop every league around the world, then we can do it. But I don\u2019t think the Japanese really care about stopping their (season) for the benefit of the big leaguers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mark DeRosa, Team USA\u2019s manager, said after the championship game loss that he believed the tournament would get moved. DeRosa and other WBC managers had to juggle myriad usage requests from multiple MLB teams during the tournament. For example, Team USA closer Mason Miller was available in the final only if the U.S. had a lead. A midseason tournament wouldn\u2019t eliminate the load management conversations, but could lessen the concern in some situations.<\/p>\n
One question the WBC organizers would have to sort through: what do players who are not participating in the tournament do? During the 2028 Olympics, the league and the union might hold exhibition games between major leaguers and minor leaguers.<\/p>\n
Issues around insurance for players participating in the WBC will persist no matter the time of year the tournament is played.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it is a little bit complicated because of the insurance issue, and understand the (MLB) organizations, of course,\u201d Team Venezuela catcher Salvador Perez said during the WBC. \u201cThe organizations want the players to play for them and not for the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a very complicated topic. Many players didn\u2019t make it. Players from Venezuela and from other countries were not able to participate here because of the insurance issue. But to me, this is one of the best tournaments.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In January, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said the league had considered the possibility of an in-season…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":633187,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,48,4,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-633186","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baseball","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-boston-red-sox","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116260497945623520","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633186","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=633186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633186\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/633187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}