The people who don’t like the World Baseball Classic generally fall into two buckets: general managers, who are paid to worry, and those who don’t truly love baseball.
If you did happen to watch Team USA in the WBC here Wednesday night, you got to see Mike Trout fly into third base with a triple after he scorched a line drive with that famously tight, vicious swing of his; Mookie Betts take the extra base twice with brilliant baserunning decisions; and, on back-to-back defensive plays, Nolan Arenado pirouette at third base while turning a sure hit into an out and Betts gracefully run down a fly ball within steps of the fence in the right field corner; and you saw seven pitchers from Colombia with a combined total of nine major league games of experience gallantly hold the USA’s Dream Team in spikes to a lousy three spot.
Team USA won, 3–2, to advance to a quarterfinal game Saturday in Miami against Venezuela. Team USA manager Mark DeRosa indicated he will talk to his staff Thursday about whether to give the ball to Adam Wainwright, with his diminished velocity, or skip him and start Lance Lynn. You might see seven or more future Hall of Famers playing hard and for national pride in that win-or-go-home game. If you don’t dig that as a middle-of-March gift, don’t tell me you love baseball.
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The argument against the WBC is that players get hurt, an argument that has no statistical evidence but rose in volume and ridiculousness when the best closer in the game, Edwin Díaz of the Mets, went down with a knee injury Wednesday night. Díaz was not hurt pitching for Puerto Rico. He was hurt jumping up and down with teammates after closing a win for his beloved homeland over the Dominican Republic and while playing with his brother, Alexis, for the first time.
If you want to cancel the WBC because Díaz was injured, where were you calling for the abolishment of spring training when Dodgers shortstop Gavin Lux blew out his knee? Díaz’s injury was a pure fluke. Period.
But if you buy the foolish logic, maybe we should just ban celebrations, too. After all, Lance McCullers Jr. hurt his pitching elbow when he was hit by a champagne bottle in the Astros’ clubhouse after a 2022 postseason series clincher. Cody Bellinger wrecked his shoulder in the ’20 NLCS with a vicious arm bump with Kiké Hernández. Ramón Ramírez pulled a hammy running on the field to celebrate a no-hitter by Johan Santana in ’12. Chris Coghlan tore a meniscus while shoving a pie in the face of a Braves teammate after a ’09 walk-off win. And nine years before Kendrys Morales infamously broke his leg jumping on home plate following his ’10 walk-off grand slam, Derek Jeter hurt his foot jumping on home plate on his Mr. November home run. (It just took him 21 years to admit it.)
“I don’t think it’s really the tournament’s fault, but it does stink,” said Team USA reliever Adam Ottavino, Díaz’s teammate on the Mets. “I’m just thinking about him a little bit and you know, that’s my friend, so I’m just worried about my friend.
“It’s awful. I know what it meant to him to be in that situation for Puerto Rico, and I know what type of kid he is. I know how hard he works. I know how much he cares and what he means to Puerto Rico and to the Mets.”
Said Team USA’s Pete Alonso, another teammate of Díaz’s on the Mets, “It’s very heartbreaking to hear about Edwin. I was really looking forward to having him this year because he looked really sharp in spring, and I know he’s been throwing the ball well over the past few days. It’s really frustrating. I hope he has the quickest recovery.”
This is a tournament of flag-waving, anthem-singing, pot-banging, brass-and-percussion toting fans who don’t stop making noise. Of SNL-worthy home run celebrations (a crown for Great Britain, a sombrero for Mexico, etc.). Of players streaming out of the dugout like Little Leaguers for a mere RBI single. Of firefighters, civil engineers, independent ball dreamers, has-beens and rookie league kids getting a chance to face some of the biggest stars of the game.
The starting pitcher for Colombia on Wednesday night was Luis De Avila, a lefthander who is only 21 and already has pitched for three organizations, was suspended 72 games for testing positive for a banned substance, has been released and has been claimed in the minor league Rule 5 draft. He is also only 5'9". If you don’t think that makes him unique, know this: No left-handed starting pitcher at that height has won a major league game in 20 years. Michael Tejera of the Marlins was the last to do so, in 2003. De Avila worked around Trout’s signature triple by getting Arenado to bounce into what was a theatrical beauty of a double play turned by Colombia’s infielders, prompting the dugout to empty in celebration. Columbia led 2–1 in the fifth before a two-run single by Trout, with Betts perfectly reading his bloop single to score from second, put the Earth back on its proper axis.
Amid all the passion, the biggest treat of this tournament is watching Betts and Trout hit back to back in the Team USA lineup, play in the same outfield and tag along most every minute of their working day as if they are filming a buddy movie.
And so I asked them: If people bang on the WBC because of the injury risk factor, what will you tell your teammates and others about this experience?
“This is the funnest experience I’ve had on the baseball field, representing your country,” Trout said. “It’s been a blast. Now, obviously there’s risk involved. [But] you know, you’re still playing baseball in spring training. So, for me, it’s just being a part of this atmosphere. It is special, means a lot to me.
“And, you know, I knew going in it was going to be a fun time, but I never knew it was going to be this fun. I mean, we’ve got a pretty good team in there, and it’s fun to come to the ballpark every day.”
Said Betts, “You can always try and place blame on the WBC, but that’s just a freak accident that could happen to anyone at any given time. So, to echo what Mike said, man, this is so much fun. It’s so much fun. This is way better than getting four bats on the back field, you know? So, I encourage those [players] who are watching—come, join, play. This is a lot of fun.”
I’ll take the endorsements of Trout and Betts over the doomsdayers.
Over the years, the clubs themselves have hurt the WBC with their own lobbying campaigns against it, most of it done privately with subtle pressure on players not to participate.
“They really can’t stop you from playing if you haven’t been hurt the year before,” Ottavino says. “So as long as that’s still the case, I don’t know how they can [stop you]. They can threaten you all they want, but I mean, guys are still going to want to play. You can see the passion involved in these games.
“But yeah, nobody [with the clubs] really wants you to play. None of the teams really want you to play in it, anyway. That was the case before this [Díaz injury]. So that only strengthens that a little bit, I guess.”
Alonso, the DH against Colombia, and Jeff McNeil, the Mets’ second baseman who had the night off, were on the bench when one of the Team USA coaches approached them in the early innings.
“I’ve got some good news and bad news,” the coach said. “The good news is Puerto Rico advanced. The bad news is Edwin Díaz got hurt.”
“Every day you show up at the yard there’s a possibility of getting hurt,” Alonso said. “There’s hazard in the job. Anybody can get hurt at any time. That’s the risk we run playing baseball. We’re athletes and unfortunately injuries are a part of the game.”
It was a most unfortunate injury to one of the game’s big stars, the most expensive relief pitcher in history (he just signed a five-year, $102 million deal) and an important cog in the Mets’ pursuit of a pennant. That it happened in the WBC was nothing but a coincidence. It had nothing to do with the canard of “ramping up too quickly.” (See the hurry-up spring training of last year). It had nothing to do with overuse. (The tournament has heavy restrictions on pitcher use.) The best players in the world who are here know it was a fluke, nothing more, nothing less, and certainly not a warning about the tournament. Why can’t the armchair experts see that?
