World Baseball Classic back in 2023. How will this impact Cardinals, if at all?
After the scheduled 2020 competition was canceled due to the pandemic, the return of the World Baseball Classic in 2023 marks the first opportunity for fans to see best-on-best international baseball in the last six years.
Given how quickly the game turns over and the emergence of new stars in that time frame, it stands likely to be a momentous event that creates highlights and memories for baseball’s essential canon.
It’s also, of course, an unavoidable pain in the neck for Major League teams attempting to prepare for the season, staring down a fourth consecutive spring training outside the norm, owing to two years of pandemic problems and a third marred and shortened by a lockout.
The secret to normal seems to be that it no longer exists.
Officially, MLB, its teams, and the Players’ Association are in lock step in support of the tournament, and high-ranking representatives will dutifully offer boilerplate encouragement when asked about their concerns. More casually, the risk of having players away from camps and in more serious competitive settings several weeks before the start of the regular season lends itself to concerned whispers at a minimum.
Those concerns are the reason why the Cardinals certainly didn’t fight hard when informed that their top (only?) prize of the winter, catcher Willson Contreras, would be forgoing an opportunity to represent his native Venezuela. He’ll instead be in Jupiter working with his new pitching staff in preparation for the coming season.
Or, at least, he’ll be working with a chunk of that pitching staff. Miles Mikolas and Adam Wainwright have already committed to start for Team USA, with Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt on the corners of the national team’s infield. Tommy Edman will be in the Korean infield, and Lars Nootbaar is on the long list of players selected for consideration for Team Japan. If picked, he’d be the first player ever to represent Japan internationally without having been born there.
Several minor league players are involved as well. Pitcher Wilfredo Pereira and outfielder LJ Jones are part of the Panamanian team, and new bullpen coach Julio Rangel is their pitching coach. Outfielder Matt Koperniak played in the qualifying round for Great Britain and will do so again this spring.
Others seem like locks to be offered spots on their respective squads for whom rosters aren’t yet determined. Génesis Cabrera (Dominican Republic), Giovanny Gallegos (Mexico), Moisés Gómez (Venezuela), Tyler O’Neill (Canada), Andre Pallante (Italy) and Juan Yepez (Venezuela) all figure to receive at least some level of consideration.
Molina managing, camp impact
Oh, and Yadier Molina is managing Team Puerto Rico.
Without the ability to do more than lean gently and quietly on very few players, the Cardinals find themselves having to work around what’s left, creating spring schedules for the players set to decamp which take into account their expected absences while simultaneously not overloading them too early in the year.
The optimist would look at the wave of pending absences and see opportunity. Certainly there will be no shortage of at bats and innings available early in camp for those who might be on the bubble of the roster or looking to define their roles. With Mikolas and Wainwright out of camp, for instance, starting opportunities for Dakota Hudson, Jake Woodford and Drew VerHagen would seem to be plentiful.
If any of Nootbaar, O’Neill or Yepez are out of camp, more at bats open up for those on the rise. As January approaches its halfway point, Jordan Walker remains a strong candidate to lead the club in spring at bats simply by virtue of absences at the four positions he plays. With that opportunity and the Cardinals eager to see him force his way into the conversation, the interest in otherwise quiet spring games could ratchet up.
Support from teams necessary
With abbreviated schedules for qualifying rounds and even quicker national team camps to get up to speed, some players could be missing from Florida for as little as a week and a half. Even those with arduous travel — Edman and Nootbaar, for instance, would play their opening round games in Tokyo — should be able to stay relatively close to on track for a normal spring, despite the significant interruption.
The support from teams of the WBC is necessary if the tournament is going to succeed, and an international showcase outside the restrictive confines of the Olympics is an important opportunity for players to represent their homes in ways that may not otherwise present themselves. For a player like Contreras, this spring could be the only opportunity to do so. That he’s passing it up is significant, and certainly not an easy decision.
The tough decisions of spring training, though, often hinge on the kind of measured preparation and hands-on work that might be in shorter supply this spring than the clubs would desire. The Cardinals have been bracing for that risk, knowing the wave is crashing down on them harder than most. What’s left is only to weather it.
This story was originally published January 11, 2023 at 8:00 AM.