2023 World Baseball Classic a Huge Win for More Than Just Shohei Ohtani, Team Japan
Baseball is dying. It's been said many times over the decades, including in this one. Heck, somebody out there is probably saying it right now.
Well, tell it to the World Baseball Classic.
One needs not to have been rooting for Japan to gravitate toward "storybook" as an appropriate adjective for the 2023 WBC. Though, to be sure, it helps. They capped a clean sweep of their seven-game slate with a 3-2 victory over Team USA on Tuesday to win the tournament for the third time in five tries, and how.
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It was by way of a stunning walk-off to beat Mexico in the semifinals that Japan even landed in the championship game, wherein all anyone wanted to see was Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout.
That the two MVPs and Los Angeles Angels teammates indeed met each other at all was a treat. That theirs was the game's final matchup was like a miracle wrapped in a marvel, served on a phenomenon.
"I believe this is the best moment in my life," Ohtani said through an interpreter, according to Tyler Kepner of the New York Times, also adding, "I happened to be able to get the MVP, but this really proves that Japanese baseball can beat any team in the world."
Hard feelings? Hardly. Even Trout could acknowledge that "everybody wanted to see" an epic showdown between himself and Ohtani, while USA manager Mark DeRosa cut even more to the heart of the matter.
"This thing is real—the WBC's real," he said. "The whole world got to see Ohtani come in, big spot, battling. It's kind of how it was scripted."
The Tournament Was a Smashing Success
There typically isn't a whole lot of interest in baseball during the month of March.
Perhaps this is a statement that doesn't need fact-checking, but it's all there on GoogleTrends. Since 2004, baseball-related searches have typically peaked in October and July. And not uncoincidentally, given that the former houses Major League Baseball's playoffs and the latter is when the league's frenzied trade deadline goes down.
This March, however, is different:
Is this all because of the World Baseball Classic? Well, correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation...but yes.
The numbers coming out of the World Baseball Classic paint really are astounding. Take, for example, how just the first round of the WBC saw a 98 percent increase in attendance from the previous iteration six years ago in 2017. Over a million fans showed up, which is more than the Miami Marlins and Oakland Athletics drew to their stadiums all year in 2022.
As for TV viewership, the picture there is not yet complete. But courtesy of Front Office Sports, we know that the contest between Japan and Korea on March 10 drew 62 million viewers just in Japan. That's more than the most watched World Series game in history, pointing to the possibility that the final showdown between Japan and Team USA will have drawn even more viewers.
All of this is bonkers, and that much more so in context of how the WBC aired on traditional TV in an era of ever-escalating cord cutting.
Maybe there was nothing else to watch. More reasonably, the WBC really was that hard to look away from.
The World's Best Players, Having the World's Most Fun
It wasn't all good. Freddie Freeman hurting his hamstring sucked. Jose Altuve breaking his thumb sucked even more. Edwin Díaz tearing his ACL sucked the most.
But while such things are indeed responsible for launching a thousand hot takes in the moment, they're probably not going to be what most people remember about the 2023 World Baseball Classic in the long run.
It certainly deserves to be remembered as the most star-studded WBC to date, if for no other reason than it was a proper showcase for the player who actually is the two-way superstar that Babe Ruth only is in legend. Ohtani was a no-brainer for the tournament's MVP award, as his clinching save comes paired with a 1.345 OPS as a hitter and a 1.86 ERA as a pitcher.
That Ohtani was Japan's best player is indisputable, but not to be lost sight of is that they also had an even more accomplished pitcher in Yu Darvish, maybe the best pitcher on earth in Roki Sasaki and, in Munetaka Murakami, a slugger who won the danged triple crown in Nippon Professional Baseball in 2023.
It's also not as if Japan had it easy against this particular version of Team USA. Trout was flanked in the lineup by fellow MLB MVPs Mookie Betts and Paul Goldschmidt, the latter of whom was instrumental in recruiting players for what looked at the outset like an even better club than the one that won the WBC in 2017.
"I feel like the hype is a little bit higher this time around than it was in 2017. There's more guys that want to do it," said Nolan Arenado, who, along with Goldschmidt, also played on the '17 club.
The upping of the ante could be similarly felt with other rosters, including a Dominican Republic squad that at one point had Manny Machado, Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Rafael Devers and Julio Rodríguez set to anchor "the best lineup ever." Mexico gathered an unfair foursome of starters. Cuba missed out on Yordan Álvarez and José Abreu, but was able to get Yoan Moncada and Luis Robert Jr.
And so on and so on down the line until every possible explanation for why this year's tournament felt so incredibly star-studded is covered. And in the end, what really mattered is that it played as such. The games were great and there was something entertaining happening seemingly every other minute.
How about Ohtani dang near hitting his own face with a home run at the Tokyo Dome? Or throwing his fastest pitch ever? Or Joey Meneses with his epic bat flip? Or José De León spearheading a not-quite-perfect game? Or Randy Arozarena striking the perfect pose after robbing a home run? Or the aforementioned walk-off by Murakami? Or Trea Turner hitting not one, not two, not three, not four but five home runs, including the go-ahead grand slam that put Team USA in the semifinals?
Though these moments may have been the main courses of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, the tournament wasn't without delightful little appetizers.
At least two people will remember Ohtani getting punched out by a full-time electrician from the Czech Republic and a Nicaraguan right-hander going so hard on Machado, Soto and Rodríguez that the Detroit Tigers signed him up. And for the dozens who showed up to watch, Hall of Famer and Team USA hitting coach Ken Griffey Jr. simply taking batting practice was a sight to behold.
In all, the 2023 World Baseball Classic had plenty to see, lots to like and even more to love.
The WBC Can Only Get Better
If there's at least one reason to believe that the talent level of the World Baseball Classic can still get higher, it's that Team USA may field an actually balanced team one day. The next time the best American-born starting pitchers partake in the WBC will pretty much be the first.
Beyond that, there's the reality that the sport of baseball is becoming less reliant on America to produce good players.
The simple fact that the USA has won the WBC just once in five tries is perhaps evidence enough of this, but the really compelling stuff lies within the bounds of Major League Baseball. Whereas American-born players used to account for basically all of the good players—defined here with a baseline of 2 WAR—in MLB, that's not the case anymore:
Those blue bars? They're still trending up. That red line? It's trending down. More and more, capable major league players are coming from outside the main arena of the major leagues.
Let there be no mistake that this is a good thing for baseball. It signifies that America's pastime is basically outgrowing America. It may not be there yet, but it's on its way to becoming a global pastime.
Especially after a rendition like the one that a great many people just witnessed, the World Baseball Classic can only help the game continue to grow. And the more that it does, the better it figures to be every time it returns.
To that end, it's not too early to look ahead to 2026.
Stats courtesy of MLB.com, Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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