{"id":1825,"date":"2009-01-20T07:01:00","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T07:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1825"},"modified":"2009-10-18T16:06:37","modified_gmt":"2009-10-18T15:06:37","slug":"world-baseball-classic-provisional-rosters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=1825","title":{"rendered":"World Baseball Classic – Provisional Rosters"},"content":{"rendered":"

The provisional rosters for this year’s World Baseball Classic (WBC) were announced<\/a> last night, with baseball fans counting down the days until the tournament begins.\u00c2\u00a0 Sixteen teams will compete during March to win what is arguably the most prestigious international baseball event now that the sport’s Olympic future remains in the balance<\/p>\n

The rosters show not only who will be taking part, but also the players who have decided not to.\u00c2\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Each provisional roster contains forty-five players, from which a final group of up to twenty-eight will be selected at the end of February.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

For all of the top names that are involved, critics of the WBC have been more concerned about the players who opted out and what this means for the credibility of the event.\u00c2\u00a0 The U.S. alone will be without the Yankees’ three big free-agent signings (Sabathia, Burnett and Teixeira) and three of the Phillies’ World Series winning roster (Hamels, \u00c2\u00a0Lidge and Howard) to name just a few.\u00c2\u00a0 This weakens their talent pool, but America’s roster is still an impressive collection of Major Leaguers.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Opposing batters won’t be breathing a sigh of relief that they might\u00c2\u00a0only <\/em>have to face a\u00c2\u00a0 Roy Oswalt, Jake Peavy, John Lackey or Scott Kazmir instead.<\/p>\n

The rosters are a great indication as to why so many fans are looking forward to the tournament.\u00c2\u00a0 Just a quick glimpse at the Dominican Republic’s roster should bring a smile to your face and that’s a big part of what the WBC is about, although it’s not a feeling shared by all.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many people in the States took a negative stance towards the WBC prior to its inaugural staging in 2006.\u00c2\u00a0 That position softened as the tournament progressed, but opposition remains and is unlikely to go away. The age-old \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcclub versus country’ debate is a large part of the problem and it’s one that we know will never be solved to everyone’s satisfaction.\u00c2\u00a0 Ask a fan if they want to see their team or their country win a trophy and the former will win out most of the time.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Red Sox fan will naturally worry about Daisuke Matsuzaka playing competitive games for Japan when he would otherwise be gently coasting through Spring Training.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIf only he would follow Josh Beckett’s example and opt out’, will be the understandable cry from fans in Boston.<\/p>\n

But what about the millions of baseball fans in Japan?<\/p>\n

They had to look on with envy as their fierce rivals Korea won the Olympic baseball tournament last year.\u00c2\u00a0 Japan are desperate to restore some national baseball pride by retaining their WBC trophy and there is nothing they want more than for Matsuzaka to lead the way.<\/p>\n

Both sides are driven by self-interest as to whether a player takes part in the WBC or not and, whichever way the decision goes, one side will be left unhappy.\u00c2\u00a0 Every player will make their own decision based on many factors and you just have to respect it.<\/p>\n

Maybe some Red Sox fans (or of any other MLB team) would say \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcwe didn’t have this problem before the WBC, so the WBC is a bad idea’, and again that’s understandable, but that’s why it is up to other people to make decisions for the greater good of the global game.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are millions of fans around the world who are greatly excited by the prospect of the WBC.\u00c2\u00a0 If a few MLB teams are disrupted by an international competition once every four years, then so be it.\u00c2\u00a0 Yes it’s a compromise, but it’s one that most other sports live with, not least because a strong international scene helps to promote the domestic competitions (and vice versa).<\/p>\n

MLB is a very successful competition already; however the Classic\u00c2\u00a0is a great way to showcase the sport to newcomers and in the long term this should be to\u00c2\u00a0MLB’s benefit.\u00c2\u00a0 There are undoubtedly aspects of the WBC that could be improved upon (is Spring Training the best time for it?\u00c2\u00a0 Does more need to be done to protect pitchers and if so what? etc), but solutions can be found if everyone buys into the idea.<\/p>\n

The World Baseball Classic is worth the effort.\u00c2\u00a0 The passion and excitement produced by the games in this year’s event will be proof of that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The provisional rosters for this year’s World Baseball Classic (WBC) were announced last night, with baseball fans counting down the days until the tournament begins.\u00c2\u00a0 Sixteen teams will compete during March to win what is arguably the most prestigious international baseball event now that the sport’s Olympic future remains in the balance The rosters show […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-1825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international-baseball-2","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1825"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5420,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1825\/revisions\/5420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}