As soon as reports of the injury came across social media, it was deja vu for Astros fans.
Oh no. It’s happening again.
In 2023, Jose Altuve, fresh off an All-Star 2022 season and a top 5 MVP finish, fractured his left thumb after being hit by a pitch in the World Baseball Classic match for Venezuela against the USA. Altuve end up missing the first 43 games of the Astros regular season.
This year, it is shortstop Jeremy Pena, himself fresh off an All-Star 2025 season and a top 10 MVP finish. Pena fractured the tip of his right ring finger after fielding a hard ground ball while playing for the Dominican Republic. He is scheduled to be reevaluated in 2 weeks. Until the then his recovery timeline is up in the air.
The 2023 Astros barely squeaked out the division title that year, edging out the Rangers in a tiebreaker. Perhaps an additional 40 games with Altuve in the lineup would have made it a little easier. Perhaps another 10 games without Altuve, and the Astros don’t take the division at all.
Margins are razor thin in 2026 as well. ZIPS projections had the 2026 Astros finishing with 87 wins, 1 win behind the Mariners. Losing Pena for an extended period of time changes the calculus; the battle for the division becomes more uphill.
Injuries from an exhibition tournament have sparked debate on the World Baseball Classic. Why have it when it risks injury to star players? Why have it during Spring Training? Do MLB Players need to be involved?
These questions have all just been answered by the NHL and the recent Winter Olympics.
The World Baseball Classic is important for the sport of baseball.
“As American as baseball or apple pie,” goes the old adage, but baseball doesn’t just belong to America anymore, and it hasn’t in a long time.
It is enormously popular around the world. The best baseball player in the world right now is Japanese. This is not the 1992 Men’s Basketball Olympics, where a gold medal for the USA Dream Team was a foregone conclusion. Japan, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico are all powerhouses that can absolutely compete with the United States. Even Canada, Cuba and Korea can’t be ignored.
Hockey has had a similar transformation. It doesn’t just belong to Canada anymore. The 2026 Winter Olympics men’s hockey tournament had numerous contenders. The USA, Sweden and Finland also had legitimate gold medal aspirations, and the USA ended up realizing them. If Russia had been allowed to participate, they would have been a serious threat as well. The Czech Republic and Slovakia made waves as well.
The 2026 Winter Olympics hockey tournament was also the first time since 2014 that NHL players were allowed to participate, and it was enormously successful. This reinforces how important it is to have a global event where the best of every nation can compete against each other.
After its conclusion, more eyes were drawn to the NHL. More people knew who Hart and 3-time Vezina trophy winner Connor Hellbuyck was. More people were interested in the sport of hockey.
The World Baseball Classic can and does do that for baseball.
It’s always been kind of a joke that the MLB Championship was named “the World Series”, when the entire league is in North America. That’s not the case with the WBC.
The World Baseball Classic is not a meaningless exhibition tournament.
In the context of its significance for the MLB season, WBC games are like Grapefruit or Cactus League games: they don’t count.
They are not meaningless though. In fact, I’d guess these games mean more for the players than MLB games.
I’m sure there is a pride a player feels when he dons the jersey of a Major League Baseball team. To wear the orange and blue of the Astros, to run out into Yankee Stadium wearing pinstripes, or to sport the Olde English “D” of the Tigers.
I am also sure it pales in comparison to wearing the colors of your home nation.
The allegiance a player feels to their MLB team is going to be different to the allegiance they feel to their country. By country, I do not mean whatever government or leaders are installed in their home nation. This isn’t political. I mean their allegiance to the people of their country. You may like and even deeply appreciate your employer, but you love and are devoted to your family.
The World Baseball Classic should be held in July in lieu of the Midsummer Classic, not during Spring Training.
The timing of the World Baseball Classic is wrong though. Spring Training is when players are ramping up for the season. They’re trying to shake the rust off. Pitchers are trying to get stretched out.
Having the World Baseball Classic in March is asking players to play at 100% when they’re not 100% yet.
When you have the best of the best playing in a global tournament, you want these players to be in midseason form.
So why not hold the WBC… midseason?
The best of the best would be in a position to show off their best.
The MLB needs to do exactly what the NHL did. Replace the All-Star Break with a 2 week break for the World Baseball Classic. You can still name AL and NL All-Stars; they would just be ceremonial, as there wouldn’t be an actual AL-NL All-Star game, a game which has struggled to generate a competitive atmosphere (Although still better than the NBA All-Star Game or the NFL Pro Bowl, which they don’t even bother playing anymore.)
In the NHL, replacing the All-Star Game with international competition works so well that the NHL didn’t even bother to wait until the 2026 Olympics to do it. In 2025, they made their own “4 Nations Face-Off” international competition featuring a mini tournament between NHL players of the USA, Canada, Sweden and Finland. It was fantastic.
Having a 2 week break from the regular season instead of the standard 3-4 day All-Star Break would make scheduling the MLB regular season more of a crunch, but it’s not impossible with doubleheaders and a slightly earlier start to the season.
Or, just hear me out, in years where there is a World Baseball Classic, just have a 154 game season! The MLB season was 154 games from 1920 to 1961, and it did fine. I would gladly trade those extra 8 regular season games for the World Baseball Classic.
Baseball is fun, and so is the World Baseball Classic.
I am as a disappointed as anyone that the Astros face the prospect of an opening day without Jeremy Pena, but all the good things that the WBC brings far outweigh the bad. And really, Pena could have suffered that injury in a Spring Training game too. In fact, he kind of did. It wasn’t an actual WBC game; The Dominican Republic was playing the Detroit Tigers at the time.
Let’s enjoy the next couple weeks of international play. All the world’s a stage, and the WBC ought to be for the MLB what the Olympics are to the NHL.
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Let us know your thoughts on the World Baseball Classic. Post a comment at the end of this piece if you like, or better yet, join the TLA Discord Server, where debate and discussion on the topic of the WBC has been extensive, and prompted me to write this piece.
