{"id":504166,"date":"2026-03-05T00:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/504166\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T00:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:04:13","slug":"who-is-travis-bazzana-mlb-prospect-and-australia-native-talks-wbc-and-sushi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/504166\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is Travis Bazzana? MLB Prospect And Australia Native Talks WBC (And Sushi)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Team Australia<\/a> infielder Travis Bazzana<\/a> has yet to make his Major League Baseball debut, but he has already made MLB<\/a> history.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bazzana became the first Australian-born player to be drafted in the first round when the Cleveland Guardians made him the first overall pick in 2024. Two years later, the top prospect is knocking at MLB\u2019s door.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After finishing last year at Triple-A, where he had an .858 OPS in 26 games before his season was cut short by an oblique injury, Bazzana was a non-roster invite at big-league camp this spring. He\u2019s far from a lock to make the Opening Day roster, but he\u2019s on track to be patrolling second base in Cleveland at some point this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Before that happens, though, Bazzana has another debut to make.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Travis Bazzana is ready to lead Australia at the WBC. (Getty Images) <\/p>\n

He’ll lead his home country in the World Baseball Classic for the first time when the tournament kicks off with Australia<\/a> facing Chinese Taipei<\/a> at the Tokyo Dome.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two weeks before Bazzana left for Japan<\/a>, I caught up with the 23-year-old infielder to talk about growing up playing baseball in the suburbs of Sydney, why and how he was drawn to the sport, the food he misses most from back home, the allure of representing Australia in the WBC<\/a>, his 2026 goals and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I know you played cricket and other more popular Australian sports growing up. What drew you to baseball?\u00a0<\/p>\n

My dad played a lot of sports. He played rugby, cricket, baseball primarily, and he was solid at all three. I\u2019m the youngest of three boys, and they were around the field, Dad was around the baseball club, and I just took a lot of attention to it. I would ask my parents to hit tee-ball. I would be the bat boy for my older brothers and run around the field. I loved every second of just being at the baseball field and watching and taking it all in. It never got pushed on me, neither my brothers, but it became my identity early on.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As early as I can remember writing about what I wanted to do, it was like I wanted to be a baseball player, and everyone knew I played baseball. That was just like my thing. I played all the other sports, but baseball is what I took a passion to. If I had a chance to sit down with free time when I was little, I was watching MLB.com highlights.<\/p>\n

How hard was it to find people to play baseball with in Australia?\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(Photo by Daniel Shirey\/WBCI\/MLB Photos via Getty Images) <\/p>\n

There are lots of baseball clubs and lots of Little League systems and things in place for grassroots baseball in Australia that made playing consistently fairly easy, but in terms of finding friends that aren\u2019t at the baseball club to play with, like I didn\u2019t play any backyard baseball with friends growing up, really. Maybe when we had, like, my team meet up and do that.\u00a0<\/p>\n

[TOP 10 WBC MOMENTS: What makes the all-time list?<\/a>]<\/p>\n

But if I was with my school friends, it was rugby or cricket at the park on the weekend when we had free time. At school, recess or whatever, it was cricket, touch rugby, sometimes basketball, sometimes soccer, never baseball. At my high school, there were only a couple kids that played baseball and not at a high level, really. In terms of finding people to play with, it was like I would be going to the baseball field to do that. I wasn\u2019t playing wiffle ball, I was playing backyard cricket.<\/p>\n

Can you describe growing up in Turramurra for those who aren\u2019t familiar?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a very nice northern suburb of Sydney. Lots of good parks. Lots of good clubs for all kinds of sports. Good schools. It\u2019s a great spot. Let\u2019s just say the house prices in Turramurra are probably booming right now and have been. They\u2019re insanely high, so it\u2019s a good spot, and I was lucky to grow up there. But yeah, if you walked around Turramurra, you\u2019d probably find some kids playing rugby and cricket.<\/p>\n

When did playing pro start to feel like a real possibility for you?\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think when I was like 14 was when it really started to kick in that I was going to get a chance to pursue what I had always worked for. I was 14 when I was playing in the 15U national tournament in Australia, and I felt like I could hold my own with some of the older kids, and there was some pro scouting interest starting to arise. So that was when I was like, OK, I think I\u2019ll be capable to at least take some kind of path toward pro baseball, whether that was go pro or go to college. I really started to kick in the planning for that.<\/p>\n

Is there a place or type of food you miss the most when you’re not home?\u00a0<\/p>\n

One thing that\u2019s really cool about Australia is we have really good sushi for not a premium. You can find great sushi spots all around where you get, like, really quality rolls for $3-5. So you have lunch, get three good sushi rolls for $12, and the quality\u2019s great, and there\u2019s no issues, and it\u2019s consistent. Here, you go to a sushi place, and they charge you $18 for a roll, and you\u2019re like, from my perspective, that\u2019s like five times too much. It\u2019s rice with a little bit of fish. The upcharge here is big. They make sushi the very boujee thing in America, and it doesn\u2019t have to be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Considering this will be your first time competing for Australia at the WBC, how well do you know the other guys on the team?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There are only a couple of guys on the roster that I grew up sort of playing with or against. The majority of those guys, it was sort of academies, Australian Academy or our state academies back home where maybe they\u2019re a couple of years older than me, but all the best youth players would kind of get together. There are times when I was around some of them then. Most of the rest of the players were people I kind of watched on the men\u2019s team in the last 10 years when I was coming up that I hadn\u2019t spent much time around, maybe played a game or two against them in the Australian Baseball League when I was young before I went to college. I definitely knew who all of them were, and then I got to play with most of those guys last year in the Premier12 tournament. So I kind of know everyone on the team now, but from childhood it was mainly watching most of the guys.<\/p>\n

How much fun was it to watch Australia advance out of the first round for the first time in 2023? How quickly did you decide you wanted to participate in 2026?<\/p>\n

I was wishing I could have been on that team. I was in college watching, but I was in the middle of a season and hadn\u2019t really earned that right yet, but they did an incredible job that year, and people stepped up in huge situations, and that whole roster really played their role and did a great job. It was something that was on my mind for a long time, and that kind of cemented, \u2018This next tournament, I\u2019m going to get the chance,\u2019 and I let everyone know that was what I wanted to do, and now it\u2019s almost here.<\/p>\n

I know you dealt with a couple of oblique injuries last year. When did you start to feel right again, and what\u2019s your goal for 2026?\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Travis Bazanna is the first Australian player to ever be drafted in the first round. (Photo by Jill Weisleder\/MLB Photos via Getty Images) <\/p>\n

The last oblique issue happened like the second to last week of the season in Columbus, so I went home right after the season and was doing rehab work but nothing very intense and a lot of just relaxing with family. Once I got back from Australia and I was finished traveling and was able to ramp back up, I would say I was feeling good. By Nov. 10, I was kind of clear of that, so obliques were clear by November, and I had a really strong build-up.<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, I\u2019m just trying to make the most of camp. Obviously, the big leagues are on the horizon, but it\u2019s just about performing and continuing to get better and showing the big-league staff what I can do. Once it\u2019s there, just enjoy the game, play hard like I have, and everything should take care of itself.<\/p>\n

Can you see the opportunity ahead?<\/p>\n

Yeah, 100%.\u00a0I\u2019m in big-league camp and get to take reps with guys that have been there, done that, every day. I feel like it\u2019s right around the corner. I\u2019ve just got to do what I can, and if opportunity arises, just take it with both hands.<\/p>\n

Was it a hard choice to leave camp knowing how close you are to the big leagues?\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s something I thought about, but it was never going to shy me away from going and doing [the WBC]. At the end of the day, if I was going somewhere that was a cool event to not play baseball, it would make sense. But I\u2019m going to play on one of the biggest stages in the world. In my opinion, it competes with playoff baseball in MLB. I think if I\u2019m physically prepared, there\u2019s almost not a better way to get good game reps in an important environment to prepare for a season. So there\u2019s obviously a team aspect that I\u2019ll be missing here for like 12 days, maybe 10 days, and hopefully more if we go to Miami. But at the end of the day, if I\u2019m playing against some of the best players in the world, in front of 60,000 or 50,000 in the Tokyo Dome, whatever it is, I think it\u2019s a positive no matter what. Hopefully, I can make the most of that and come back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Team Australia infielder Travis Bazzana has yet to make his Major League Baseball debut, but he has already…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":504167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[1246,2320,13090,363,99,211834,72364],"class_list":{"0":"post-504166","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-cleveland-guardians","10":"tag-major-league-baseball","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-travis-bazzana","14":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=504166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/504166\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/504167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=504166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=504166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=504166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}