{"id":440579,"date":"2026-01-27T11:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T11:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/440579\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T11:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T11:25:08","slug":"nolan-arenado-to-play-for-puerto-rico-at-world-baseball-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/440579\/","title":{"rendered":"Nolan Arenado to play for Puerto Rico at World Baseball Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Nolan Arenado will play for Puerto Rico in the 2026 World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n<p>Arenado, who<a href=\"https:\/\/arizonasports.com\/mlb\/arizona-diamondbacks\/nolan-arenado-trade\/3608494\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> Arizona acquired in a trade with the St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> just 13 days ago, played for the United States in the 2017 and 2023 WBC but has a mother of Cuban and Puerto Rican heritage.<\/p>\n<p>In 2017, Arenado played on Team USA that defeated Puerto Rico in the finals to win the title.<\/p>\n<p>The eight-time All-Star and 10-time Gold Glove winner is not the first player to switch nationalities after playing for Team USA in a prior WBC. Similarly, pitcher Marcus Stroman was named MVP for Team USA in 2017 but played for Puerto Rico in the 2023 tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Fellow Diamondbacks Ketel Marte and Geraldo Perdomo will play for the Dominican Republic; Corbin Carroll will suit up for Team USA; and Eduardo Rodriguez will represent the Venezuelan national team at the 2026 tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Puerto Rico plays in Pool A with Canada, Colombia, Cuba and Panama. Its group stage games will be at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in San Juan, Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n<p>The World Baseball Classic runs from March 6-17 with the championship game in Miami. Unlike in previous years, no tournament games will be held in Arizona; however, some nations will play tune-up exhibition games around the Valley before the tournament starts.<\/p>\n<p>Puerto Rico fell to Mexico in the quarterfinals in 2023 after back-to-back second-place finishes.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"twitter-follow-button\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/veenstra_david\" data-show-count=\"false\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Follow @veenstra_david<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arizonasports.com\/arizona-sports-newsletter-signup\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AZSportsEmail-830x100-1.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0 auto;\" class=\"mobile-signup\"\/>\t&#13;<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/AZSportsEmail-830x100-1.jpg\" style=\"margin: 0 auto;\" class=\"desktop-signup\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>                    <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arizona Diamondbacks third baseman Nolan Arenado will play for Puerto Rico in the 2026 World Baseball Classic. Arenado,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":440580,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-440579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440579\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}