Well its been four years, so its time for the second go-around of the Selig-creation, the World Baseball Classic to ruin the season a few more players. Now don't get me wrong as a baseball fan, the concept of the WBC is an awesome one, I mean in March you get real competitive baseball, featuring players all across the globe that can make some new stars like Dice-K last time as well as some magic moments. What's not to like right? Unfortunately what may sound good in practice does not always translate to success. Indeed, while it is a lot of fun to see, having major league players and more precisely pitchers add an additional month of high pressure pitching is highly detrimental to their well being for the entirely of the season as well as long term.
Now you may say well these guys are pitching now anways, they're starting spring training already, and games start today, these guys are just getting their work in in a different uniform.
It's true that these guys are in games down in Florida and Arizona, but if anyone has seen a spring training game you know that this is not exactly the same level of intensity as a playoff or even a regular season game. Starting position players play maybe half of the game and call it a day and the pitchers hardly even go that far. Furthermore, while they are batting to live batters, most of these guys aren't pitching like its an actual game, they're down there to work out and fine tune their stuff which is exactly what they're doing. maybe a guy with four pitches will throw exclusively two pitches just to get down his mechanics or delivery ready for the regular season. Especially against major league hitters this can result in the pitcher getting knocked around, but thats not the point, the point is to be prepared for the games that matter.
Now compare that to pitching in the WBC, where you're in a playoff bracket where second chances are few and far in between and the pressure is high. Instead of working out the kinks and getting ready for the real season these guys are skipping that step and jumping into high leverage situations immediately forcing them to throw their full repritore of pitches to get guys out. Now when you consider how fragile pitchers are these days and how few guys even get to the plateau of 200 innings anymore, don't you think throwing another 25 innings or so for an extra month under those circumstances could possibly do more harm than help?
Of course you could argue well that's just your amateur opinion, how can you justify that it really makes a difference? Well look at the table below that I borrowed from the Bleacher Report, a comparison of the ERA + of pitchers who competing in the WBC last time around. For those who aren't familiar with the nerdy stat ERA + it takes into account park effects and the league average ERA to give you a more precise idea of how good a pitcher is with 100 being league average and the higher the better.
2005/2006 Change
Roger Clemens: 226 193 -33
Chad Cordero: 224 134 -90
Brian Fuentes: 164 142 -22
Todd Jones: 190 116 -74
Brad Lidge: 184 84 -100
Gary Majewski: 139 95 -44
Joe Nathan: 165 283 +118
Jake Peavy: 134 99 -35
Scot Shields: 154 159 +5
Huston Street: 253 134 -119
Mike Timlin: 202 109 -93
Dan Wheeler: 191 176 -15
Dontrelle Willis: 151 112 -39
Totals: 2377 1836 -541
Avg/Pitcher: 182.9 141.2 -41.7
W/O Nathan: 184.3 129.4 -54.9
With the very strong exception of Joe Nathan pretty much everyone across the board had an off year from the year before the WBC and its pretty hard to deny.
Furthermore, it seems the players themselves have taken notice and are staying away in droves, enough to compile a few all-star teams worth of guys from Johan Santana, CC Sabbathia, Albert Pujols, Mariano Rivera to name just a few. Indeed, these players and many others appeared to have taken notice and don't want to jeopardize their real jobs for this exhibition of sorts.
As a baseball fan I love the idea of a world cup of baseball, but not at the price of the major league season. While its a great thing in theory its current execution is flawed at best and shows a real lack of understanding of how demanding the game of baseball is on these player's bodies. Hey what's another month of baseball right? It may not be football or hockey, but the long season of baseball, especially when you factor in another month of playoffs is a very long and tiring thing, hard enough to endure without any additional burdens. Don't tell me I didn't warn you when you draft Jake Peavy, Roy Oswalt and the rest of these guys for fantasy baseball and they have off years.
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