The World Baseball "Classic"

"A lot of guys aren't playing in the WBC because there's just no good time for it. It's a situation where you have guys who should probably be playing and you've guys who don't even have jobs who are trying to win jobs. It's both ends of the spectrum. For me, in the future, if I'm locked in with a long-term deal and I know I have some security with a team, then that's a different story. I'm not going to jeopardize anything for my ballclub or myself."
-Jonathan Papelbon

This quote to me makes a lot of sense and illustrates a big problem with the WBC: There's no good time for it that will be convenient enough for players to risk their careers, and their team's season. The best time I can think of is in the middle of the season, but there would have to be a break of at least a week, and more likely two weeks, which creates more problems: Is it fair to give non-WBC players a long break to rest and get healthy? Do you do away with the All-Star game? Would you still have as many players skipping the WBC in favor of simply resting for two weeks?

If you didn't include fewer teams, the tournament would be in a time-crunch as well, which brings me to my second main WBC issue: It's not that great of a competition. This is partly because many of the players don't seem to take it seriously, nor do they have enough reason to, but also because the nature of baseball makes it difficult for the winner a one-game elimination tournament to be the best team -- there's just too much luck involved. When so much of the outcome of one game depends on the performance of the starting pitcher, even the best teams don't win much more than half the time.

This is distinctly different from soccer's World Cup, which is successful because it's a good competition. The players are passionate, often to the detriment of their club teams, and it's rare that a great team will lose to a mediocre one due to the nature of soccer. Since eleven players are involved, and necessary, to win, soccer is better-suited to a single-elimination tournament.

So we have a conundrum. Even if you get every player motivated enough to compete at their top level, and find a time when the players are well-prepared for the tournament, you could still have a bad competition if one team's top two starting pitchers have a great two weeks. And if you extend the competition to ensure more fairness, it becomes long and takes away from the MLB (and NPB) seasons. To be fair, the competition issue probably bothers me more than most fans -- like those that were okay with the 83-win Cardinals winning the World Series a few years back -- but it is an annoyance.

All this said, I'll watch the upcoming WBC, and I'm excited for most of the games. But it's hard to get too into it when half the players aren't themselves.