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The 2013 World Baseball Classic began in Southeast Asia this past weekend.\u00a0 The North American pools begin play tomorrow.\u00a0 I’m a sucker for pretty much any international athletic competition, and baseball is my favorite sport, so it would seem only natural that I would be excited about the WBC.\u00a0 But that’s not quite the case.\u00a0 I will certainly watch it, but I will do so knowing that this is not the ideal way of crowning a true World Champion.<\/p>\n
The flaws of the WBC are many, but #1 on the list for me is that a majority of the sport’s best players will not be participating, particularly those who could be representing the United States.\u00a0 I don’t blame any of the individual players for not participating and I’m not sure there is anything MLB or the tournament organizers could do to change this, but it certainly hurts the tournament.<\/p>\n
Team USA suffered a blow yesterday when they lost their presumed starting first baseman, Mark Teixeira, to a wrist injury.\u00a0 He was replaced on the roster by Eric Hosmer.\u00a0 Due to the last minute nature of Teixeira’s injury, I realize the options were probably quite limited in finding a replacement.\u00a0 But if I were to compile a list of the top 10 American first basemen, I’m not sure Hosmer would make that list.\u00a0 Meanwhile, a player who probably would rank ahead of him, Anthony Rizzo, is competing for Team Italy.\u00a0 Don’t get me started on the ridiculousness of that…\u00a0 But the point is, Team USA is clearly not as strong as they could be.\u00a0 I decided to take a crack at compiling my ideal roster for the USA.\u00a0 This team would be prohibitive favorites to win the competition, rather than just one of several countries with a decent shot at it.<\/p>\n
Players who are actually on the USA’s WBC roster are italicized.<\/em><\/p>\n My starting lineup:<\/p>\n 1.\u00a0 Mike Trout, RF<\/p>\n 2.\u00a0 Andrew McCutchen, CF<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Ryan Braun, LF<\/em><\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Prince Fielder, 1B<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Giancarlo Stanton, DH<\/em><\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 David Wright, 3B<\/em><\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 Troy Tulowitzki, SS<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Buster Posey, C<\/p>\n 9.\u00a0 Dustin Pedroia, 2B<\/p>\n Reserves:<\/p>\n Catchers – Joe Mauer<\/em><\/p>\n Infielders – Evan Longoria, Ben Zobrist<\/em> (just so I have someone who can back up any position)<\/p>\n Outfielders – Matt Kemp, Josh Hamilton<\/p>\n Starting Pitchers:<\/p>\n Justin Verlander, Clayton Kershaw, Stephen Strasburg, David Price<\/p>\n Bullpen (I’ll use a couple regular SPs out of the pen):<\/p>\n Craig Kimbrel<\/em>, Jonathan Papelbon, Jason Motte, J.J. Putz, Matt Cain, Chris Sale, Glen Perkins<\/em>, Tyler Clippard, David Hernandez<\/em>, Jonny Venters<\/p>\n No other country could come close to putting together a roster with that sort of depth.\u00a0 Not that it would guarantee victory in a tournament with so few games, but I’d take my chances with this squad.\u00a0 Only eight of my choices are on the actual team, and none of them are starting pitchers.\u00a0 No offense to Ross Detwiler, Ryan Vogelsong and Derek Holland, but they are quite a drop off from the rotation I compiled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The 2013 World Baseball Classic began in Southeast Asia this past weekend.\u00a0 The North American pools begin play tomorrow.\u00a0 I’m a sucker for pretty much any international athletic competition, and baseball is my favorite sport, so it would seem only natural that I would be excited about the WBC.\u00a0 But that’s not quite the case.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-446","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=446"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":450,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/446\/revisions\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=446"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamteambaseball.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}