WBC is an unserious exhibition in its current state.

It’s awesome. The energy and competitiveness was great. Always opportunities to improve but don’t act like this is broken.

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It needs to be moved to late fall or mid winter and adopt a longer, more serious tournament format.

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Not a single pitcher is going to pitch in the WBC after a 162 game season and postseason. Most players wouldn’t want to either. That’s just not realistic

When it’s played is really the only time you’d be able to maximize the talent competing

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Every country (USA) needs to be 100% invested in competing.

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I’m not quite sure how you fix this.

We sent about as good of a lineup as the US could and they couldn’t score for shite, even struggled against Brazil and Great Britain. The entire US baseball system is setup on analytics now, even with travel ball kids, and those analytics don’t win short tournaments like this.

I kind of wanted an atmosphere like the World Cup but the event fell short of that level of excitement. I would take a 4 team tournament (US, Venezuela, DR and Japan) to replace the all-star game. Either that, or an 8 team tourney in spring training and the final 4 at the all star break.

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2. Every country (USA) needs to be 100% invested in competing.

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3. It needs to be moved to late fall or mid winter and adopt a longer, more serious tournament format.

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The more serious we are the less meaningful of a competition it becomes. And a longer competition will become very boring watching our superior depth dominate shite in 3-game series with less opportunity for upsets. Best on best would see the US and Japan in most every final as they are by far the deepest squads. I have no interest in watching a sweatier longer tournament outside of the championship. There may be some allure in that game / series but the tournament as a whole would be as underwhelming as watching 95% of Olympic basketball

You don’t actually want the serious tournament you think you do. The restrictions and opt-outs at least make it more of an even playing field and not a borefest

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1. MLB needs to remove its influence (I know they created the thing, but they’re harming the product with restrictions)

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I believe you’re confused as to what the product is. The product isn’t the WBC. That’s the sales channel. The product is MLB / baseball as a whole to international markets

We’re the least relevant market. Worst case we stop following the event…in which case so what, it’s already not well watched or attended here. The goal of the tournament isn’t to have a best on best competition. It’s to leverage a few games watched by an international fan every 3 years into years or a lifetime of MLB fandom. When there’s more parity and that stops being the goal, then there’s room to contemplate a more serious tournament. But that’s not for a while

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Just frustrating thinking about the roster we could’ve had if American players cared more and MLB had no say.

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We had plenty of our best players. They just played like bums.

I bet those Venezuelan guys never even played travel ball so unserious

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Not a single pitcher is going to pitch in the WBC after a 162 game season and postseason. Most players wouldn’t want to either. That’s just not realistic

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I agree with you, but also hockey players do with this for the iihf world championships every year. Those start while the Stanley Cup playoffs are still going, and some guys will get knocked out of the playoffs and immediately fly over to Europe to join their national team.

Just more evidence that hockey is the purest sport left standing.

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but our Olympic basketball team shite the bed because certain athletes didn’t want to participate for various reasons.

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When? We have won the last 5 golds

Hate LeBron all you want but ever since he has been top dog be put it on himself to make the Olympics serious. Hopefully now that he is done others will care as much

Star Player interest/participation has been growing every time. I can’t imagine any veteran player preferring to grind out another spring training instead of this awesome atmosphere. The pitching is always going to be dicey because of the money involved with mlb. But the pitching was really good for the US this time, despite the limitations. The big bats never taking off was the US downfall.