You’d swear that the Team USA roster for the 2026 World Baseball Classic is being assembled by the vengeful spirit of Mike Trout for one purpose: to ensure it doesn’t come down to the last at-bat.
A dream team for the Americans started coming together when Aaron Judge and Paul Skenes signed on early last summer. The roster has only gotten more ridiculous, and the hits kept on coming when Tarik Skubal, Logan Webb, Mason Miller and David Bednar joined up on Thursday.
Though the roster isn’t yet final, Team USA currently looks like this:
Catchers: Cal Raleigh, Will Smith
Infielders: Bobby Witt Jr., Gunnar Henderson, Brice Turang
Outfielders: Aaron Judge, Corbin Carroll, Pete Crow-Armstrong
Designated Hitter: Kyle Schwarber
Starting Pitchers: Paul Skenes, Tarik Skubal, Joe Ryan, Logan Webb, Matthew Boyd, Clay Holmes, Nolan McLean
Relief Pitchers: Mason Miller, David Bednar, Griffin Jax, Garrett Whitlock, Garrett Cleavinger
The offense alone is terrifying. Judge, Raleigh and Schwarber each topped 50 home runs this year, while Witt, Carroll and Crow-Armstrong all have at least one 30-30 season on the books. Henderson hit 37 homers and stole 21 bases in 2024.
Then again, a lack of offense is not why Team USA has only won a single WBC in five tries. The team’s pitching has tended to be…well, not even an Achilles heel, but more a stick of dynamite in a paper bag.
Team USA Will Bring the Heat for Once
The 2026 World Baseball Classic will mark 20 years since the first one, and that inaugural event might be the last time Team USA bothered with an intimidating pitching staff.
The bullpen had All-Star closers Joe Nathan and Brad Lidge, plus reigning AL Rookie of the Year Huston Street. The three starters were Roger Clemens, Jake Peavy and Dontrelle Willis, who had totaled 19.7 rWAR during the 2005 MLB season.
It was all downhill from there, particularly with the starters. The starters used by Team USA in the 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2023 tournaments had averaged a total of 12.7 rWAR in the previous season. Mark DeRosa’s options last time were Merrill Kelly, Lance Lynn, Adam Wainwright and Nick Martinez. Not exactly Spahn and Sain.
Going from that to a staff led by Skenes and Skubal would make a one-eighty do a one-eighty.
Each collected a Cy Young Award in November, with Skubal winning his second straight. They rank first and second in ERA for the last two seasons, and they love throwing 100 mph about as much as they hate walking dudes.
This is probably the only staff on which Ryan or Webb would be a No. 3. Each was an All-Star this year, with the former relying on his elite K/BB ratio and the latter getting by on his elite ground-ball rate.
At least one of Boyd, McLean and Holmes figures to pitch in relief, though Bednar and Miller will be DeRosa’s best options to close games. The latter might be the best pitcher in the world on a pitch-to-pitch basis, and he can also claim to have thrown maybe the single best pitch in baseball history.
Nobody Said It Will Be Easy for Team USA
As for what Team USA’s pitching will be up against, what’s needed now is a smash cut to the Dominican Republic lineup:
On no team should Manny Machado ever be a bench jockey…except maybe this one, which has Jose Ramirez at third base and Junior Caminero in the DH spot in support of Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr., Julio Rodríguez, Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo and Yainer Diaz.
That’s going to be a capital-P Problem for Team USA, and it won’t be the only one. Japan will have Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and an embarrassment of options to fill out the remaining spots. Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto were in the lineup in 2023, and Shota Imanaga and Tatsuya Imai are candidates to join the pitching staff, which reportedly won’t feature Roki Sasaki.
For now, though, Team USA can have the posture that these are the only two teams it needs to worry about.
Along with the USA, Japan and the Dominican Republic are the only countries to have ever won the World Baseball Classic. The former was only one run better than Team USA in the 2023 final, and even the Dominican Republic’s projected lineup didn’t perform as well as the Americans’ projected lineup this past season:
If you’re Team USA, you’re feeling good about that. And as good as Sandy Alcantara and as-yet-unconfirmed rotation mates Christopher Sanchez, Freddy Peralta and Framber Valdez are on the mound, there’s neither a Skenes nor a Skubal in that group.
That Team USA is a .200 hitter in the WBC makes it hard to take anything for granted. But just as certain individual players do every spring, it sure looks like the idea for Team USA is to show up to the tournament in the best shape of its life.
