2026 World Baseball Classic: A Little Selflessness?

It’s March 21, 2023, and you’re standing up. Fortunate enough to have scored tickets to the World Baseball Classic (WBC) championship game. You, 36,000 fellow attendees in the sold-out crowd, and upwards of 67 million people at home know that a seminal moment in baseball history is about to unfold. 

With a full count in the ninth inning, the U.S. is down to its last out, and Mike Trout is at the plate against Shohei Ohtani. Trout and Ohtani — two of the sport’s most brilliant stars, teammates on the Los Angeles Angels, each toting an embarrassment of accolades, and shoe-ins for Cooperstown already — are squaring off, with the WBC title on the line. Ohtani unleashes a devastating sweeper, which Trout, bested, whiffs at. The game is over — Japan wins — and the WBC has been decided. Ohtani roars while Trout retreats to the dugout, and you cannot believe your luck to have witnessed it all. For baseball fans everywhere, the moment is magic; it is impossibly good theater, a fairytale scenario plucked from the sky and delivered to the undeserving. 

That was the 2023 World Baseball Classic: a once-in-a-generation spectacle, a drama probably unrepeatable in its glory. But surely those who control the two-week international tournament have gone to great lengths to ensure that the stage is set if a similar moment were to arise again? Surely they haven’t erected barriers that impede the unadulterated unfurling of the beautifully chaotic event that is the WBC? Surely they haven’t sullied their own product? Surely those involved wouldn’t be so foolish, right? As it turns out, they might just have. 

The 2026 World Baseball Classic kicked off last Wednesday — the event is scheduled every four years, barring COVID complications — and nowhere on Team USA’s roster does Trout’s name appear. Team USA is pretty good, and there are plenty of impressive names, wonderfully talented folks filling the slots, but shouldn’t Trout be there somewhere? He was the 2023 Team USA captain, is a 3x MLB MVP, had loud public support to make the roster, said he wanted to, and is still talented enough to don the stars and stripes. Trout, though, isn’t the only surprising absence from this year’s tournament either. Stars Jose Altuve, José Berríos, Carlos Correa, Jose Alvarado, and others are all missing from their respective rosters, despite being obvious, qualified, and proven talents for their nations. So what gives? Where are Trout, Altuve, and Correa? What changed from 2023 to 2026 to thin the talent-pool? 

Of all things, insurance regulation did. 

The same athletes competing in the WBC often have Major League Baseball (MLB) contracts. These are the best players in the world, and the best teams in the world compensate them richly for their skills. Naturally, the clubs paying players tens of millions of dollars want their players to be healthy during the MLB season. The Cincinnati Reds, Atlanta Braves, and, as in Trout’s case, the Angels have little interest in the success of international teams at the WBC; they simply want their players to remain available. For these self-interested clubs to permit their players to compete in the WBC, then, they must be protected, insulated from the risk of paying a player’s contract if that player gets hurt. So, teams get insured. 

In 2023, Edwin Díaz, one of the most ferocious closers in baseball, ruptured his right patellar tendon while celebrating with his Puerto Rico teammates and missed the entire ensuing MLB season. The New York Mets lost their marquee closer for the year, but they didn’t have to pay his fee. Instead, an independent insurer, National Financial Partners (NFP), footed the bill for Díaz’s exorbitant contract. Since then, however, NFP — the sole insurer for the WBC — has grown more stringent. 

NFP is willing to carry only so much risk, so it minimizes its exposure by restricting its insurance coverage. Those who are too old, too injury-prone, or with contracts too lucrative (all classifications made by NFP itself) are unlikely to be covered. Essentially, a risk-management calculation is why Trout and others are missing from this year’s tournament; their national teams couldn’t convince NFP to insure their MLB contracts. Team Puerto Rico, for example, which is often a late-stage staple of the tournament, has seen its lineup gutted by no-coverage decisions and even considered withdrawing from the tournament entirely due to the severity of its roster restrictions. Worse, had Ohtani wished to both hit and pitch for team Japan in this year’s tournament — just as he did in 2023 — the NFP would not have insured him either. In other words, had Ohtani insisted on taking the mound again, a cautious insurance agency would have barred both central figures from the greatest at-bat in WBC history from returning to the tournament. Makes sense.

Of course, the 2026 rendition of the World Baseball Classic will not be derailed by insurance disputes. The passion and energy that underpin and ooze through the tournament have made for dynamic moments and must-watch television. Though some high-profile names are absent, dozens of stars remain in the competition, and the depth of baseball’s global talent means that NFP insurance refusals could never singlehandedly derail the event. 

The bigger issue is the MLB and organizations within the MLB failing to recognize that their insecure pocket-watching is detrimental to the game. Obviously, it is not as if the MLB has taken an absolute stance against letting their players play in the WBC — many of them are, including both reigning MVPs, Ohtani and Aaron Judge. MLB even has a financial stake in the WBC, as it is a joint owner of the tournament. But the MLB still fails to give its muscle — its player base — the breathing room to push baseball to the next level. The WBC is an unrivaled global stage for baseball. That MLB allows superstar talent to be withheld over something as trivial as insurance coverage shows that the organization is not as committed to baseball’s health and future growth as it should be. 

The World Baseball Classic has been hamstrung by its insurer — what now?