Lincoln Zdunich
Last night Team Venezuela beat out Team USA to win their first ever World Baseball Classic title. Anchored by a lineup of big-league players like Luis Arraez and Maikel Garcia, the group won upset after upset (beating Italy and Japan to make it to the finals).
Now that the WBC is over, players will be heading back to Spring Training with their clubs to ramp up for the regular season. It’s easy to forget that Opening Day is a week from tomorrow! But the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants will kick things off the day before with a special Opening Night game on March 25.
The Ramp-Up to Opening Day
The great thing for most of the players who missed out on camp for the WBC is that they already appear to be in mid-season form. Arraez hit .308 with two home runs, Garcia won the MVP hitting .385 with seven RBIs, and plenty of others followed suit.
In particular, just about everyone on the Dominican Republic was raking. The group led all WBC teams with a .300 batting average and a Classic record of 15 homers.
As these players return to their clubs, the ramp-up will be interesting to watch. After coming from such an electric, playoff-esque atmosphere to Cactus and Grapefruit League play might be jarring for some. But with only a week left to go, it shouldn’t affect the hitters too much.
The bigger worry is how it might affect the pitchers. With many of them staying in reserve for these games (or pitching on irregular schedules) their build-up to the regular season may now be slightly more messy than clubs were hoping for.
The hope is that everyone is good to go by next week, ready to contribute at the highest level for their team. The WBC is a wonderful way to increase baseball’s international clout, and a way for players to represent their home on the world stage, but the hope is always that any success in the Classic would translate over into the season. How that shakes out will be seen over the next week.
