The only mindset players go into the World Baseball Classic with. Don't get injured. Sadly it happened to relieve pitcher and closer from the New York Mets in Edwin Diaz while playing for his national club in Puerto Rico.
He unfortunately injured his knee while celebrating a victory with Puerto Rico beating the Dominican Republic 5-2. He collapsed to the ground and had to be taken off the field in a wheelchair.
It's the one thing you never want to see, especially before the MLB season starts. It was the Mets worst fears as Diaz will be out for the season. Now comes the question, should the World Baseball Classic be played in the off-season?
There's mixed emotions and feelings where a lot of American MLB players don't feel the need to play in the classic. When you can't get your best players to play in the Baseball Olympics of the sport, you start to question why. Edwin Diaz was the reason.
Starting pitcher for the New York Mets Max Scherzer expressed how he doesn't feel the need to play. He's gotta be prepared for a long season and a run to the World Series. That he doesn’t want to throw out his arm before the season starts and it makes perfect sense and is totally understandable.
The World Baseball Classic is played in the middle of spring training. It puts a damper on pre-season for MLB in some ways.Chemistry is developed with your teammates, managers are figuring out lineups and what the roster will look like come April.
When you look at the landscape of the WBC, it's played in the preseason before the regular season. The Olympics are played in the off-season for basketball and there's more reason and pride for it.
There's mixed emotions when I look at the World Baseball Classic from an American standpoint. I went to the USA VS Great Britain game and felt the crowd and energy at Chase Field. The chants of "U-S-A!" and fans from all different cities and walks of life.
Then there's the American baseball fans who could care less, especially if their team are contenders for a World Series crown. With the majority of MLB rosters filled with Latino players, those teams will be stacked with hitting, pitching and fielding and we saw a great display of that for two weeks.
There's also Japan and how great they played in the WBC and how Shohei Ohtani showed why he's one of the best players in the world right now. Teams are stacked from Puerto Rico to the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Japan and many others.
Even if we are to shift things to the off-season, will it incline more Americans to play? Who knows, especially when organizations have their say on pitch count for pitchers because of contracts and the 162 game season.
We got our share of seeing Mookie Betts and Mike Trout the star players for their prospective LA organizations but the star power wasn't there for the Americans. Teams don’t fear America anymore and Mexico and Japan went toe to toe with the USA team and beat them.
While I enjoyed the one game I went to and felt the energy of American pride, a lot of diehard baseball fans want to raise the World Series trophy for their respective cities. There are plenty of teams in contention for the title this year and I understand why Americans are hesitant to play in the World Baseball Classic.
Who knows what the future holds for the World Baseball Classic. What I can say is, the two week classic brought in a lot of revenue for the struggling attendance franchises in the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Miami Marlins.
It's time to have conversations about the timing of the next World Baseball Classic. The parity is there, America has to catch up....
