The 16 team, 18 day World Baseball Classic is great in theory but will have many problems as MLB tries to make it work. Cuba has come out and said, that if this competition is a capitalization of baseball it will not participate. The Japanese Major Leagues has accepted, but their players association has not. Alex Rodriguez said he would love to play for the Dominican Republic, but minutes later was told by Commissioner Bud Selig, it's not his decision to make. These are just a few of the early problems getting these games off the ground.
The Major League Baseball Players association has said, they will require pitch counts. Here's my take.
First of all, look at that paragraph structure. Look at those last two "sentences." I know it's pretty easy to nitpick a former athlete's grammar, but c'mon, Fox Sports. You must have proofreaders. Jeez.
Moving on, let's see why Dibble thinks the WBC is such a bad idea.
I actually don't entirely disagree with Dibble here. Yes, many players will decline, and yes, these games will pose an injury risk. But it's not like these games are mandatory. And the risk of injury is about the same as it would be in a spring training game, which is what they'd normally be doing at the time. The bottom line is if a player, or that player's team, thinks it's a bad idea for that player to play, then guess what? They don't have to play. Easy.
As for the "NO rewards" comment, I have to disagree with our erstwhile Nasty Boy. Did you see those guys during the Home Run Derby? They were going nuts. Wouldn't you rather see the DR take on Venezuela than an early spring training Jays-Phillies split-squad game? I would.
Just like winter baseball in many countries, once players have achieved some success in our Major Leagues, their teams ask them to stop playing, 1) because they don't want the player to risk injury and 2) teams want their players to have enough off-season as possible, and to save their best baseball for the MLB Championship Season.
These will be some of the major problems facing MLB as they ask players, 1) who are not in tip-top shape and 2) could be coming off season-ending surgery or some injury that hurt their production the year before.When writing a baseball column, 1) try not to use the same enumarative literary trope twice and 2) don't use it two paragraphs in a row.
When you do this, 1) you look like a moron, and 2) you look like an idiot.
Sorry. I couldn't resist. Anyway, this doesn't really make any sense because these players would otherwise be playing in spring training anyway. Dibble also seems to think that players are going to be forced to play in this thing at the expense of any mitigating factors.
"Sorry, Kerry Wood. I know you're coming off your 17th Tommy John surgery, but the US just needs you to start against South Africa. You're just going to have to put your career on the back burner. Your country needs you."
I agree with Dibble that these games are essentially meaningless. You know which other games are meaningless? Spring training games.
And this might be the biggest reason — we are trying to get ready for a long, 185 day, 162 game season and possible playoff games. Some of our team is playing in this tournament, and some of us are playing spring training games, and all of us are not together for 18 days, and possibly longer depending on if you go to the final rounds?
"We?" "Our team?" "some of us?" Oh dear, the poor man thinks he's still in the league. Rob. You haven't pitched in the majors in 10 years because you fucked up your arm so bad your career was over at age 31. You must have pitched in a lot of World Baseball Classics to mess up your arm that bad!
If I'm a player and or an owner, I say no thanks, if you won't stop the season for the Olympics, then don't stop spring training for The World Baseball Classic.
Wait. Those are two entirely different things. In one, baseball is essentially replacing some meaningless games with other, more interesting meaningless games. In the other, we're interrupting a season for an event which is no longer in the Olympics. I'd say that's a pretty major difference.
