{"id":515991,"date":"2026-03-05T13:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T13:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/515991\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T13:00:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T13:00:07","slug":"world-baseball-classic-2026-usa-name-star-studded-roster-in-bid-to-regain-title-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/515991\/","title":{"rendered":"World Baseball Classic 2026: USA name star-studded roster in bid to regain title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Most of the other 30-man rosters feature mainly minor league players with a smattering of stars. Of the 600 players in total, about half are affiliated with MLB teams, with 190 currently on MLB rosters.<\/p>\n

They include a record 78 players who have been named to an All-Star team, with 36 selected last year. The US have the most, but the Dominican Republic and Venezuela have at least 12 All Stars.<\/p>\n

Juan Soto<\/a> plays for the New York Mets on the most lucrative contract in world sport – worth a staggering $765m (\u00a3600m) – and he will lead the 2013 champions while Ronald Acuna Jr stars for Venezuela.<\/p>\n

Czechia are the only team without an MLB-affiliated player but again have Ondrej Satoria, the electrician who struck out four-time MVP Ohtani in 2023.<\/p>\n

Ohtani will not pitch as the two-way superstar<\/a> continues his recovery from elbow surgery and the Los Angeles Dodgers have agreed to release team-mate Yoshinobu Yamamoto because they “understand how important the WBC is to everyone in Japan”.<\/p>\n

The 27-year-old pitcher, who was series MVP as he and Ohtani helped the Dodgers win last year’s World Series,<\/a> added: “I’m in good shape, so I can play in the WBC and be ready for the Dodgers’ opening game.”<\/p>\n

Nolan Arenado has switched allegiance from Team USA to Puerto Rico, who will feature pitcher Edwin Diaz, while Boston Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran will play for Mexico, and Australia will be led by Travis Bazzana, the first overall pick of the 2024 MLB draft.<\/p>\n

And with baseball returning to the Olympics, the two highest-ranked teams from the Americas will qualify for LA 2028, besides the hosts USA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Most of the other 30-man rosters feature mainly minor league players with a smattering of stars. Of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":515818,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-515991","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=515991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/515991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/515818"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=515991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=515991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=515991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}