World Baseball Classic: two rounds to take place in Japan

From Yakyu Baka comes the news that Japan will be hosting two rounds of the WBC next year, and will likely have the Japanese be in the same pool as Cuba, China, and one of the teams that win a qualifier. Presumably this means that Team USA will be on the opposite side of the bracket, since I doubt MLB is going to want all of those MLB players to deal with jet-lag and see ratings plunge due to Team USA games being early in the morning. It’ll be interesting to see how the attendance for the games in Japan that don’t feature the Japanese will be, though. I also have to wonder if this is somehow tied to how the NPB Players’ Association has been demanding a bigger slice of the pie, with having two rounds in Japan being either a incentive or concession about that.