There’s no feeling like representing your country on the world’s biggest stage.
While the 2028 Summer Olympics are two years away, MLB and the worldwide baseball community have come together for the past 20 years, to put on a worldwide baseball tournament, the World Baseball Classic.
The World Baseball Classic (WBC) is similar to the Olympics, in the sense that national teams face off against each other, however the WBC uses a bracket-style system to determine a winner, like the MLB’s postseason.
The teams featured in this year’s edition were separated into four “pools”, each featuring five teams.
Pool A:
Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Panama, Puerto Rico
Pool B:
Brazil, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, USA
Pool C:
Australia, Chinese Taipei (Taiwan), Czechia, Japan, South Korea
Pool D:
Dominican Republic, Israel, Netherlands, Nicaragua, Venezuela
The WBC final game was played on Wednesday night, and Venezeula was on top, winning 3-2 against the USA.
Maikel Garcia, third baseman for Venezuela, was awarded WBC MVP for his performance in the final, which by itself was nothing special, 0-3, with only one RBI, but the lone-RBI that Garcia scored on his third-inning sac-fly was important to Venezuela, and with his defensive prowess, Garcia’s MVP award is most definitely deserved.
The USA were the favorites to win, according to ESPN, with a -285 moneyline against Venezuela’s +225. Going into the quarterfinals, 50% of WBC bets on BetMGM were for Team USA to win it all.
Team USA first baseman Bryce Harper had the following to say after the loss, “I want to win gold, just like anybody else. But at the end of the night, man, they did it. They won… They’re the best team in the world”. He added, “It’s about us and our game. I just wanted to let them know and say congratulations”.
Harper and his Philadelphia Phillies were defeated in the NLDS by the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
The next World Baseball Classic (WBC) event will be in 2030, so fans will have to wait four years to see their country back on baseball’s biggest international stage.
The 2026 MLB season starts this Wednesday, March 25, with a matchup between the San Francisco Giants and the New York Yankees.
