The 2023 World Baseball Classic, the fifth edition of the international tournament organized by MLB, is around the corner.
The event will start on March 8 and will host the 20 strongest nations in the world when it comes to playing the game of baseball.
Many specialists consider the Dominican Republic and the United States as favorites to win.
That isn’t a surprise, since they both have incredibly good and deep rosters with some of the biggest stars in the game.
The shocking part is that the world isn’t giving enough credit to Japan, the only country with multiple WBC victories with two.
Both the Dominican Republic and Team USA has one trophy, but the Japanese took the first two editions in 2006 and 2009.
Japan might have won those two classics, but some argue that the team they will send to the 2023 edition is their best ever.
“Japan is the only nation to win @WBCBaseball multiple times, yet this could be the greatest @samuraijapan_pr roster ever. Shohei Ohtani. Yu Darvish. Seiya Suzuki. Munetaka Murakami. Rōki Sasaki. Lars Nootbaar. Yoshinobu Yamamoto. And more names to come,” MLB insider Jon Morosi tweeted.
Japan is the only nation to win @WBCBaseball multiple times, yet this could be the greatest @samuraijapan_pr roster ever.
Shohei Ohtani. Yu Darvish. Seiya Suzuki. Munetaka Murakami. Rōki Sasaki. Lars Nootbaar. Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
And more names to come. @MLBNetwork @MLB
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) January 12, 2023
Ohtani is the most impactful baseball player in the world, so that’s a good start.
Darvish is a true ace, and Suzuki is a top hitter for the middle of the lineup.
Nootbaar started to break out last year and is one of the more promising hitters in the tournament, while Murakami has MLB future written all over him: he hit 56 home runs in the last season of the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and has 159 over the last four campaigns.
More stars are expected to commit in the upcoming weeks.
This team will be very, very hard to beat.
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