I really hope you enjoyed watching the World Baseball Classic this year. I certainly did (well, other than the debacle against Japan). What’s more awesome than breaking the hearts of millions of Canadians on their own turf by outlasting them 6-5? Maybe David Wright breaking the heart of one of our own colonial possessions with a walkoff hit in the ninth. If these games don’t get your patriotic juices flowing, I don’t know what will.
As cool as the idea of the World Baseball Classic is, it’s seriously flawed.
First of all, players should be required to play for their home country. Before his surgery, Alex Rodriguez was lined up to play for the Dominican Republic, even though he was born in New York City and has been an American his whole life. Only eight players on the Italian team are actually from Italy, with the rest being American or even Venezuelan. If a country has to rely on another country to supply more than half of its players, it probably shouldn’t have a team in the competition.
Second, there are silly roster and pitch count limits. Why not expand the roster size to 40 (like MLB rosters in September) and allow more people to wear the national uniform? Teams could use a 10-man starting rotation so each starter only has to pitch one game and their clubs won’t have to impose an arbitrary 100-pitch limit. And maybe stars like Tim Lincecum, Cliff Lee, and CC Sabathia would actually come out and pitch if they could essentially spend their entire Spring Training with their club and simply head to the WBC for one game.
Most importantly, though the Classic’s format makes no sense. The 16-team field is divided into four pools, which play a double elimination tournament amongst themselves. The top two advance to the second round, but not before they play an additional game against each other to determine seeding for the next round, even though both teams go to the same second round site for another double elimination tournament with the top two teams from another pool.
The top two teams from both of the second round pools (after playing another meaningless seeding game against each other) advance to a single elimination semifinal and championship game. This means that the United States could beat Venezuela four times during the tournament, and Venezuela could still beat us in the final and take the tournament.
Now does this really make sense to anyone? Meaningless games for “seeding purposes” when both teams are guaranteed to advance to the same site anyway? I would rather just take a forfeit and not tire out my pitchers or risk injury.
What’s even worse is the single-elimination semifinal and final. Baseball is not the type of game that is meant to be played single-elimination style. Sometimes the better team just loses. Notice how the World Series champion always loses at least 60 or so times every season. A best-of-three or best-of-five series would be the most fair. Remember in 2006 how Japan was 3-3 including two losses to 6-0 South Korea, but Japan’s victory over South Korea in the semifinal meant Japan moved on and South Korea went home? That was absurdly unfair in a game like baseball.
The format also ensures that a fourth of the teams will play only two games before going home, probably blowout losses, while another fourth will play only three games before leaving. If the World Baseball Classic is such a big deal (it’s not, but it could be), teams should have the chance to play many more games.
My proposal to fix the format is to first drop the number of teams to 12, which will be determined by some kind of qualification. That way, abysmal teams like South Africa and what Italy would be without so many Americans won’t even make it unless they get better.
Then, guarantee each team 10 games by randomly splitting into two pools of six teams and playing a double round robin.
Let the winners of the two pools play a best-of-five final series. That way, even the bad teams will get several games against other bad teams and the opportunity to pick up wins, and we are very likely to see the best team win.
Now I understand the “point” of the World Baseball Classic is to market the game on an international scale, and I’m OK with that. That’s why I don’t object to playing most of the games in inferior foreign stadiums rather than a nice MLB stadium in America. But the way the World Baseball Classic is set up right now doesn’t set up for a fair, satisfying competition. Baseball can do better than this.
Harry Nelson is a senior majoring in mathematics and political science. He can be reached at [email protected].
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