Record finish for World Baseball Classic

If there was any doubt that the World Baseball Classic is here to stay, the record audience for Tuesday’s final should put that to rest.

Tuesday’s Japan-United States World Baseball Classic championship game averaged 4.48 million viewers on FS1 (4.97 million with Fox Deportes included), easily the largest audience in the history of the event. The previous high was 3.05 million for the 2017 U.S.-Puerto Rico final on MLB Network, ESPN and ESPN Deportes.

Four of the seven largest World Baseball Classic audiences ever took place in this year’s tournament, with the caveat that out-of-home viewing was not included in prior years.

Including postseason, Japan’s win outdrew all-but-one Major League Baseball game on FS1 last year. Game 4 of the Phillies-Padres NLCS averaged 4.88 million. The last regular season MLB game with a larger audience was the first “Field of Dreams” game two years ago, and outside of that no regular season game has had as many viewers since 2011 (Yankees-Red Sox: 4.72M).

Ohtani fans Trout to seal Japan’s 3rd Classic championship

MIAMI—Team Japan hoisted the 2023 World Baseball Classic trophy to celebrate its third tournament championship with a 3-2 victory over Team USA on Tuesday at loanDepot park.
...
In a matchup anticipated by many, Shohei Ohtani clinched the game by striking out Angels teammate Mike Trout in the ninth.

A deeply satisfying finish to a spectacular tournament.

MLB’s Rob Manfred pushes for more star pitchers in next WBC

The World Baseball Classic, which has produced a string of exhilarating games and enthusiastic crowds, will “100 percent” return in 2026, Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said Tuesday, moments before Team USA and Japan squared off in the championship game from LoanDepot Park.

Before then, Manfred said, he would like to see more stars playing in the tournament, particularly on the pitching side.

“It’s great the guys that we have,” Manfred told a small scrum of reporters, “but I’d like to see pitching staffs that are of the same quality as our position players.”

A long list of star position players decorated rosters throughout the World Baseball Classic, but a lot of the sport’s best pitchers either did not participate or faced tight restrictions regarding their usage, especially in the late stages of the tournament.

Japan plates 2 in ninth, ousts Mexico in World Baseball Classic

Munetaka Murakami, it turns out, was due.

Murakami, the star Japanese third baseman who owns the nation’s home run record and is coming off a Triple Crown, struck out in his first three plate appearances of Monday night’s World Baseball Classic semifinal. But he came through when it mattered most, delivering a two-run double in the ninth inning that sent Japan to a thrilling, 6-5 walk-off victory against Mexico at a sold-out LoanDepot Park.

AS CALLED ON JAPANESE TV: pic.twitter.com/3zzrOXp0O5

— Timothy Burke (@bubbaprog) March 21, 2023

2023 World Baseball Classic 1st round a global success

The 2023 World Baseball Classic registered an attendance record for the First-Round drawing 1,010,999, the most attended round in the history of the tournament and a +98% increase vs. the previous record of 510,056 in 2017. The average attendance of 25,275 also set a record for the First Round of the tournament eclipsing 2017’s average of 20,402 by +24%...

In Japan, the March 10th Japan vs. Korea game on TBS registered a 44.4 rating, making it the most-watched game in the history of the World Baseball Classic in any country. The game outrated all sports competition during the Tokyo Olympics. Japan’s four First Round games averaged a 42.3 rating in the country….

In the Dominican Republic, viewership for the Dominican team’s games were +37% vs. 2017. In Mexico, the first two games on Imagen featuring Mexico registered an increase of +10% vs. 2017. Ratings for all four games in Mexico were not yet available.

Team USA’s first game versus Great Britain on FOX and FOX Deportes averaged 1.592 million viewers making it the most-watched first round game in the U.S. since 2009.

Puerto Rico’s De Leon, bullpen ‘perfect’ in WBC mercy-rule win

Officially, Puerto Rico’s 10-0 victory over Israel in the World Baseball Classic on Monday night will not enter the record books as a perfect game, even though four pitchers combined to retire all 24 hitters they faced in the mercy-rule win.

Just don’t tell that to Puerto Rico’s players.

“It’s perfect for us,” said starter Jose De Leon, whose 5.2 brilliant innings spearheaded the best performance of the Classic from the two-time runners-up and sets up an epic matchup against the Dominican Republic on Wednesday in which the winner is expected to advance and the loser likely will bow out after pool play.

The Elias Sports Bureau, which renders official scoring decisions for Major League Baseball, said WBC games are being held to the same scoring standards as MLB games, in which “official” perfect games and no-hitters must last at least nine innings. Puerto Rico capped its win Monday with an Enrique Hernández walkoff single in the bottom of the eighth inning, sending its players catapulting onto the field in celebration.

World’s stars align as Classic rosters announced

Baseball is more of a global game than ever before, and that’s proven on the rosters: There are 67 MLB All-Stars, 186 players on 40-man rosters and 332 players under contract with big league teams. There are eight Major League MVPs in Paul Goldschmidt, Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Mookie Betts, Clayton Kershaw, Jose Altuve and Miguel Cabrera. In fact, 16 of the top 18 finishers for the 2022 NL MVP and six of the top 10 finishers for the 2022 AL MVP are scheduled to participate in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, with the reigning Nippon Professional Baseball MVP Munetaka Murakami and Korea Baseball Organization MVP Jung-Hoo Lee joining in, too.

The tournament, which is set to begin on March 8, will pit the very best of the world against each other, and the possibility of dream matchups—Trout vs. Ohtani, Betts vs. Julio Urías, Xander Bogaerts vs. Yu Darvish, Lee vs. any number of big league pitchers who could be his teammate next year—has fans on the edge of their seats already.

MLB players from Cuba allowed to represent home country in WBC

The United States will permit Major League Baseball players from Cuba to represent their home country in the World Baseball Classic next year.

The decision announced Saturday in a news release by the Baseball Federation of Cuba (FCB) could be a big step in once again turning Cuba’s national team into heavy hitters on an international stage.

Major League Baseball confirmed Monday that the U.S. granted the license to FCB. It clears the way for MLB stars such as Jose Abreu, Yordan Alvarez, Randy Arozarena, Yoan Moncada and Luis Robert to play for Cuba in the WBC in March if they choose to accept a potential invitation.

It’s up to each country’s national governing body to pick the players on its WBC team. Final 30-man rosters are due Feb. 7 for the WBC, which begins March 8 with Cuba facing the Netherlands in Taiwan.