Is The World Baseball Classic To Blame?

by Eric Simon on Sep 9, 2009 6:00 AM EDT Comment 42 comments

More photos » by Jeff Roberson - AP

He Hurt Me. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)

The World Baseball Classic seemed like a good idea at the time. The goals of the tournament have been modest: to ostensibly bring together the best players the world over in an effort to a) promote baseball around the globe, and b) establish national pride in the sport and its players, in some ways replacing the Olympics, which no longer award medals for baseball. The salient difference between the Olympics and the WBC is that while the former emphasized the contributions of amateur athletes, the success and publicity of the latter would fall primarily on the shoulders of professionals, many of which would come from the well-paid ranks of Major League Baseball.

For the 2009 WBC, the Mets sent fifteen players in all, nine of which were locks for the Opening Day roster. Johan Santana would have made the tally an even ten if the Mets hadn't insisted he pass on the tournament after offseason knee surgery. There has been plenty of debate over whether the WBC is actually good for MLB; it's hard to argue that it isn't good for baseball as a global entity, but there's plenty to be said for withholding a team's precious commodities from highly-competitive play before their bodies may be ready to do so. An argument can be made that the level of exertion in Spring Training games isn't all that different from that of the WBC. Stamina is certainly a concern, though, as regulars often play partial games early in the spring while typically playing a full nine innings in World Baseball Classic action.

The Mets sent more players than any other big league team to the WBC this year and, whether by causality or mere coincidence, their regular season made haste towards the toilet before too long. I'd like to think the two have nothing to do with one another, but take a quick look at the nine big leaguers the Mets lent to the World Baseball Classic:

Jose Reyes
Oliver Perez
Pedro Feliciano
Alex Cora
Carlos Delgado
Carlos Beltran
J.J Putz
David Wright
Francisco Rodriguez

Only three of the nine -- Wright, Feliciano and Rodriguez -- have had what could be reasonably described as healthy seasons. Reyes has been out since May 20. Delgado has been gone since May 10. Putz since June 4. Beltran had been out of action since June 21 before returning last night. Cora, for better or worse, missed the second half of May and, after returning for two months, has been out since August 12. Perez made just one start in May and hasn't pitched since August 23.

Feliciano has been fine, so there's that.

Though comparatively healthy (notwithstanding Rodriguez's early season back spasms), Wright and Rodriguez have arguably had the worst seasons of their respective careers. Wright has done a fine job getting on base, but his power has been nonexistent. Not an awful season by any stretch, but given his career arc and the fact that he's nearing his prime years we can only blame Citi Field so much for his lack of pop. Rodriguez, meanwhile, is likely to post the lowest strikeout rate, highest walk rate, lowest WAR, highest tRA, and lowest LOB% of any of his seven full years as a pro, and this after moving to what should be the weaker offensive league.

I'm not sure the WBC is much to blame for the Mets' misfortune this year; we could still be looking at an historically awful convergence of luck, perhaps mixed with a dash of poor medical advice (though the medical/training staff make logical scapegoats, I think it's unfair to paint all of the Mets' injury problems with their brush despite their inept handling of Ryan Church's concussion last year, among other incidents). I do think it's fair to suggest that the WBC may have played a role in this lost season, though; whether we can ever know for sure is another question altogether.

We won't have to deal with the World Baseball Classic for another four years, and while I won't suggest the Mets sit it out entirely, I would advise them to hedge their bets a little next time by perhaps placing a cap on the number of players they make available to the world rosters. The Mets have given fans little to cheer for in 2009, and if the WBC had anything to do with it that'd be a shame for all involved. Personally, I had only tepid interest in the World Baseball Classic when it aired, and would usually be happier watching a meaningless Mets Spring Training game than a meaningless WBC matchup between the USA and Venezuela. Maybe I'm just crying over a little spilt milk, but would it be too much to ask for a do-over and see if things would have turned out differently?

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ichiro

is fine, and having another stellar year in a long line of stellar years.
there might be ways to improve on the WBC schedule, a lot of players did complain about it.
maybe a better idea would be for MLB clubs to start using year round training camps like NFL teams do, they’re paid millions for the year so why not work all year? ollie went into the WBC in terrible shape and by the time he got to the team was a wreck.

by cntrlalt on Sep 9, 2009 6:38 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

You may be onto something

with the conditioning idea. As for Ichiro, even if there were some link between WBC participation and the Mets’ woes — and I’m not saying there is — naming players who didn’t suffer as a result of the WBC doesn’t prove the converse to be true. Everyone has a story of a life-long smoker who lived to 100, none of which acquits smoking of the millions of annual deaths it likely contributes to.

In summary: the WBC is worse than smoking.

by Eric Simon on Sep 9, 2009 9:26 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

right

absence of proof is not proof of absence. i think the point i was trying to make but didn’t do too well was linking ichiro’s success to his offseason training program. the asian teams that participated in the WBC had been practicing and conditioning for a period before the event started. other teams were forcing players to go full gear from a dead stop, and millionaire 25 year olds don’t always have their offseason training programs in the front of their minds, i.e. ollie.

by cntrlalt on Sep 9, 2009 9:47 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Gotcha

That makes a lot more sense now. And I generally agree that it behooves MLB teams to do a better job of overseeing their players’ offseason conditioning habits.

by Eric Simon on Sep 9, 2009 10:00 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

look at

andruw jones, he knew he was in a contract year and still showed up overweight and out of shape.

with so much on the line he chose not to workout in the off months. i think the NFL has it right, instead of letting players go after the last game and not seeing them until spring training.
some players might not think its fair because they don’t live in their team’s city year round, but my feeling is if you’re making that much money it won’t kill you or your family to move.

by cntrlalt on Sep 9, 2009 10:14 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

But Ollie got married!

He’s so mature!

by JoshNY on Sep 9, 2009 3:30 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Put it this way:

It didn’t help.

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Sep 9, 2009 7:05 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I think the real question would be what team sent the 2nd most amount of players to the WBC.

Here’s a quote
“Of the 115 MLB players that participated in the event, 24 have spent time on the disabled list this year; more than twenty percent. There have been 7 more that have missed time to injury during the season but have not been disabled and still another 10 experiencing seasons that range from extremely sub-par to career-worst. That’s thirty five percent of those who played in the Classic having to deal with an unexpectedly disappointing season”

I think it might be better if either there are less games in the same season as the WBC (Just scratch the Inter League games between non-rivals) or if there is only one or two MLB stars per WBC team. The Netherlands team had a great run for a team which had almost no MLB Stars.

by WebBard on Sep 9, 2009 7:13 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

I like that suggestion

It could replace IL play in the middle of the season either before or after the All Star Game, as a kind of four-yearly month-long exhibition of baseball.

by deadspy3 on Sep 9, 2009 7:18 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Though still flawed, this is a much better approach to the question

Rather than simply listing the Mets players who had injured/bad seasons. You absolutely NEED to compare all the teams and players that participated and, additionally, over the course of many years, compare tournament years to non-tournament years.

With only the 2009 Mets in your dataset, you could make just as convincing an argument that wearing blue and orange at the same time makes you likely to get injured.

by TheBigStapler on Sep 9, 2009 10:02 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Right

Of course, we don’t have many years of data and even our data for this year is extremely limited. That doesn’t mean the question isn’t worth asking, it just means we’d have a tough time establishing any kind of meaningful causality here.

Still, a much higher percentage of Mets who played in the WBC lost time due to injury this year than relative to the team as a whole. I’m not convinced of a causal relationship given the paucity of available data, but we do have enough information regarding the Mets’ involvement in the WBC to suppose that it may have played a factor above and beyond simply being a player on the Mets (as you jocularly suggest). So I think you can certainly make a more convincing argument that the WBC played a role than simply being on the Mets played one.

by Eric Simon on Sep 9, 2009 10:12 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

You’re right and it’s at least a persuasive hypothesis. The argument being, if you begin competitive baseball without the proper conditioning, you are more likely to experience an injury at some time later in the year.

I suppose I am saddened by the fact that so many people don’t care about the tournament at all, which allows what little evidence we have of injury risk to convince the majority that the WBC is a bad idea overall.

by TheBigStapler on Sep 9, 2009 10:26 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

+1

for paucity.

"I used to be legit. I was too legit. I was too legit to quit. but now I'm not legit. I'm unlegit. And for that reason, I must quit."

by jaronson5 on Sep 9, 2009 2:03 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I think the only one you can squarely blame on the WBC is Ollie

He came back out of shape, the Mexican coach(as well as Ollie) refused to stay in contact with Wharten, and even when he was healthy early on, he seemed behind everyone else that was there. The others, I think, were just bad luck.

Just know, if there's ever a riot at Citi Field and Oliver Perez was the starter, I started the riot.

by meigs1414 on Sep 9, 2009 8:48 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Putz

left his fastball and elbow at the WBC too.

by DannyMetsGeek on Sep 9, 2009 8:56 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

WBC

(As a side note, although I don’t believe he was a Met in spring training, Elmer Dessens pitched for Mexico in the WBC. Also, I think it’s probable that Putz was hurt long before the WBC started; the warning signs were there last year.)

I like the idea behind the WBC. Nation versus nation doesn’t interest me much personally, but it is a format that interests the world as a whole. If it didn’t, the World Cup wouldn’t be the event it is. And, really, the WBC has a ton to offer professional baseball in the long run if it can help generate a passion for baseball in Australia, Europe, and Africa—the real target audience of the games.

Timing is the big issue. If you’re going to interrupt the season every four years for the WBC, why have one at all? You might as well just allow players to partake in the Olympics instead, which would have saved Olympic baseball years ago. (I believe this is the actual reason for the WBC — MLB knew the Olympics wouldn’t keep baseball without the stars, and there was no way they were going to suspend the baseball season for the Olympics, so they opted to create their world-wide tournament instead.) You can’t do it after the season for contract reasons (the Players’ Union has been adamant about not playing exhibition games after the season has ended, for the most part). So that leaves Spring.

Here’s my proposal: have the WBC take place before the season begins, but after players have had an entire ST to fully get into shape. It’s not going to eliminate injuries, but it will do all possible to minimize long-term damage. If you need one more week after the classic to make sure everyone’s in tip-top shape, take it. If you need to shorten the season, create a “Classic” schedule of 154 games.

by Alex Nelson on Sep 9, 2009 8:56 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

also an option:

scheduled double headers. Of course the greedy bastards want their cake and want to eat it to, so you’ll never see scheduled double headers again. Rather play the World Series in December

by cjmulrain on Sep 9, 2009 9:25 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Playing WS games in December

would allow us to give Derek Jeter a new nickname, something I always look forward to

by HotChipWillBreakYourLegs on Sep 9, 2009 9:30 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I'm struggling to think of one.

The Grinch? Mr. Hankey? Chanukah Zombie?

"He's definitely mixing it into his repertoire. That's French for 'repertoire' " - Keith Hernandez

by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on Sep 9, 2009 10:06 AM EDT up reply actions 1 recs

and i thought

the Chanukah Zombi was only in my family’s tradition.

I.M. Forme
"When you get yourself into trouble is when you feel you have to do something, and then you get yourself in trouble." --Omar Minaya

by itsmetsforme on Sep 9, 2009 4:05 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

It used to be Chanukah Harry

until Chanukah Zombie ate his brains.

"He's definitely mixing it into his repertoire. That's French for 'repertoire' " - Keith Hernandez

by Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright on Sep 9, 2009 10:31 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Feliciano might be fine

but Jerry is doing his best to finish him off.

by Mount17 on Sep 9, 2009 10:14 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

i don't like to irrationally blame things

especially when there is a lack of compelling evidence.

but in this case, i feel as though the WBC is 100% responsible for everything that happened this year.

or, at the minimum, the WBC makes it ok for people to be happy that they’re Puerto Rican/Dominican/Have a non-American heritage. And we all know that this is unacceptable.

by firejerrymanuel on Sep 9, 2009 10:22 AM EDT reply actions 1 recs

I'm one of the very few...

But I like the WBC in concept. Would it be better as just a straight-up, 16-team single elimination tournament, limiting each team to four games? Obviously that’s not a fair way of determining which team is best, but neither is the current format and upsets are the best things about tournaments anyway.

I guess that’s a lot of travel for an Asian team to play just a couple of games, but I’m thinking out loud.

by TedBerg on Sep 9, 2009 10:46 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

i like the wbc too

the japan-korea game was amazing! but the format IS confusing to American fans. I think people familiar with soccer tournaments know the score, but March Madness it ain’t.

by letsgocyclones on Sep 9, 2009 11:21 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yea, I love the concept

haven’t been crazy about the execution

by cjmulrain on Sep 9, 2009 6:29 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

i am not willing to flush my team's season down the toilet for the largely meaningless WBC

And it blows my mind right off of my shoulders to think that a GM would feel any different.
Sure, we only have a correlation at the moment, but how could any rational GM take the chance? For me, this is just another Bud Selig disaster. If the world wants a baseball league, let them pay the players’ salaries.

I.M. Forme
"When you get yourself into trouble is when you feel you have to do something, and then you get yourself in trouble." --Omar Minaya

by itsmetsforme on Sep 9, 2009 11:19 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

they don't want a world baseball league

they want a world baseball tournament. soccer fans follow their team’s performance in its particular league religiously but still think the world cup is the coolest thing going. obviously the wbc doesn’t have NEARLY that stature. but would you complain if it did?

by letsgocyclones on Sep 9, 2009 11:27 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

yes

I.M. Forme
"When you get yourself into trouble is when you feel you have to do something, and then you get yourself in trouble." --Omar Minaya

by itsmetsforme on Sep 9, 2009 1:57 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Cora

I think it’s hard to blame his injury on the WBC. That was kind of a freak thing.

That being said, I hate the WBC. I would much rather see a team of the best prospects and amateurs playing against each other than a bunch of guys I watch all season playing in a different setting. It’s the same reason I don’t get into Olympic hockey.

But if it’s going to happen, there are better ways to do it so that injuries don’t occur.

by Reg Dunlop on Sep 9, 2009 11:28 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Even as someone who agrees that the regimen interruption causes injuries...

The World Baseball Classic grows the game and is more important in my eyes than one season of Mets baseball. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. There are hundreds of changes that would make it better for the teams and the players, particularly timing wise.

Does it suck for us this year? Absolutely. But if down the line it moves more kids in non-baseball nations towards baseball, I think it’s more important than the disruption of normal spring training.

- Rivers McCown, From Mom's Basement

by riversmccown on Sep 9, 2009 11:58 AM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Are we sure thats a good thing?

I’m not sure I want to have to worry about losing key free agents not only to rival teams but to rival leagues across the globe 40 years from now. If anything the game is already vastly more popular in many of the countries in the WBC than it is here, maybe we should focus on regrowing interest in our own country first?

by Gina on Sep 9, 2009 5:09 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Figueroa

Didn’t he pitch in the WBC also?

by Billy M on Sep 9, 2009 12:01 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

He did

But he wasn’t slated to be on the Mets’ Opening Day roster. And he isn’t very good anyway.

by Eric Simon on Sep 9, 2009 12:26 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

I emailed a simliar thing to some baseball people

A little more elaborate, going into also other teams injuries and players having disappointing seasons. To this point the only one that got back to me was Bart Hubbuch, Mets beat writer for the New York Post and he said the following: bq. “Thanks for the insight. Yes, it’s a good theory, one that’s gaining credence as the season goes along. I think you’ll see a lot more stories faulting the WBC once the season is over.”

by momill15 on Sep 9, 2009 1:44 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Not a fan of the WBC

I don’t really get it, and it doesn’t interest me. The nationality requirements are laughable. Basically any player can play for any team they want. I’m surprised ARod doesn’t switch teams in mid-inning.

The timing sucks for MLB. If it’s that important, then play it mid-year, or after the MLB season.

I don’t know if it causes injuries. Baseball training practices seem weird to me anyway. For example, DiceK routinely threw ridiculous amounts of innings and pitch counts in Japan, all year, and was injury free.

Then he throws a couple games in the WBC, and his MLB season is shot to hell. Why? No idea.

Although I have no explanation, it does seem like WBC guys suffer some adverse effects.

But as long as it brings cash to MLB, it’s not going away. I don’t see it as “growing the game”. Baseball is already wildly popular in Japan, DR, Puerto Rico, etc. So if the goal is to drum up interest in the Netherlands, I don’t really buy that. I think it’s just to make an extra buck.

by Mex_17 on Sep 9, 2009 1:46 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Your last paragraph is spot on.

+ however many you want

by dtro on Sep 9, 2009 4:00 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

But...but...

Honkball!

"I dunno. I never smoked any Astroturf"
-Tug McGraw

by squid92 on Sep 9, 2009 7:06 PM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Based on the story of what happened with Ollie

it definitely seems like there was a lack of communication between the teams and players front offices, or at least our front office. Considering there already seems to be enough confusion in our front office concerning players conditioning, like Reyes mysteriously dropping some conditioning plan that had kept him healthy I would say that lack of communication was probably more of a problem than the Classic itself.

by Gina on Sep 9, 2009 5:07 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

If they have to have the WBC...

play it in November, so if anyone gets hurt, they will probably be OK for Spring Training.

by erich10031 on Sep 9, 2009 7:15 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

It's a not-bad idea for position players

but I can’t imagine pitchers and their front offices would be thrilled about lengthening their season.

by James Kannengieser on Sep 10, 2009 12:07 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

The way to do it would be

Have the all star break be a full week in July, and instead of American league vs. National, play an 8-team or 16 team single elimination tournament with the top countries. One of the 8 teams could even be a “miscellaneous/melting pot” team that features the best players from random countries, so everyone is a little bit included. They’d only have to do this once every 4 years, so it’d be a nice change of pace with the all star game, which gets more and more boring.

by David G on Sep 10, 2009 3:14 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs