There have been lots and lots of announcements regarding players playing in the World Baseball Classic and with good reason. For Major League Baseball and many, the WBC is a chance to showcase baseball to a worldwide audience and instill a sense of patriotism into the sport. For others, it is cause of anxiety that their team’s best player could get hurt on the field before ever playing in the regular season.
The involvements of some players have been a bit surprising, but for others their involvement with their national teams and with leagues in their home country that it was a given that they would participate. In Ender Inciarte’s case, it is the latter.
This article written for MLB.com by Jon Morosi (who has been on-point with the World Baseball Classic coverage for what it is worth) highlights a couple of things. First, Ender Inciarte is basically a lock to be the starting center fielder for Team Venezuela. This is hardly surprising as Ender has supported the Venezuelan leagues for while and was vocal in his support of Omar Vizquel as a manager of the national team. Second, Team Venezuela is loaded. Carlos Gonzalez, Felix Hernandez, Jose Altuve, and many other really good players will be suited up for Venezuela.
That doesn’t been they are the favorites though, as the defending champs the Dominican Republic roster looks like a plausible version of the 2017 American League All-Star team and the US oddly enough putting one together that looks like a plausible All-Star roster from the National League.
In short, baseball is coming back soon....that makes me happy, and for some players at least we will see players at a high level playing against each other sooner than usual.
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