This is the Winter Meetings World Baseball Classic update post. I’ll post links and news that I find on Twitter or other online sources about WBC news from the Winter Meetings here. Come back later as more stuff is added.
2:10 PM, Monday: The earliest schedule is up on the WBC website, although not quite complete (some games in the Asian pools are missing), it gives a good idea of what will be going on. Needless to say, there will be early mornings for me in March.
Next off, Chien-Ming Wang will be playing for Taipei in the WBC as a way to showcase himself for teams.
And finally, we have confirmation that Andruw Jones will play for the Netherlands.
3:24 PM, Monday: The schedule for the WBC on the website is no longer there, suggesting to me that somebody put it up before it was supposed to. Joe Torre will apparently be speaking later today, and although it likely will include lots of stuff about his role in the MLB front office, he will surely talk about his role as the manager of Team USA as well.
4:06 PM, Monday: WBC has released an early sheet of some of the notable players who will be playing for each country, although they seem to limit it to a maximum of two per country, presumably to save space on the list.
MLB players on the list include Liam Hendriks and Grant Balfour (for Australia- Balfour is a surprise since he hasn’t pitched for them in past WBCs), Yan Gomes (Brazil), Justin Morneau (Canada), Robinson Cano and Jose Reyes for the DR, Alex Liddi and Italian-American Jason Grilli for Italy, Adrian Gonzalez and Sergio Romo for Mexico, Andruw Jones and Roger Bernadina for the Netherlands, Yadier Molina and Carlos Beltran for PR, David Wright and Joe Mauer for the USA, and Miguel Cabrera and Pablo Sandoval for Venezuela.
4:26 PM, Monday: This is weird. The previous list has been replaced with this one, which has some differences. For example, it replaces Hendriks and Balfour with Ryan Rowland-Smith and Luke Hughes, it adds Brett Lawrie to Canada, it confirms Chien-Ming Wang for Taipei and replaces Sergio Romo with Jaime Garcia. I’m not sure why this is. Perhaps the first one they put up was a first draft or something.
More news if it comes out.