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.