Tarik Skubal, Paul Skenes finally give Team USA a World Baseball Classic rotation worthy of a championship
Team USA came in second place last cycle, but no thanks to their pitching staff
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1 min read
Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal, winner of the last two American League Cy Young Awards, was named to Team USA's World Baseball Classic roster on Thursday. Skubal's inclusion ensures the Americans can now deploy a rotation fronted by both reigning Cy Young Award winners, as Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes joined the roster earlier this winter.
Add in several other notable arms, including Minnesota Twins righty Joe Ryan and New York Mets standout rookie Nolan McLean, and one thing is for certain: manager Mark DeRosa will have better starting options now than he did back in 2023, when Team USA finished second in the tournament.
Indeed, the success of that squad (which lost to Japan in the Championship Game) makes it easy to forget that they fielded a less-than-impressive rotation. The Americans gave at least one start to four different pitchers, none of them on the level of Skubal or Skenes: Merrill Kelly, Lance Lynn, Adam Wainwright, and Nick Martinez. Comparatively, next spring's squad could have enough rotation options that the likes of Matthew Boyd and Clay Holmes, both quality starters themselves, may have to work out of the bullpen.
The names alone might tell the difference between the rotations. But, just to drive home the point, here's how the top four starting options stack up based on their prior regular-season performances:
| Rotation | IP | ERA | SO/BB | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 (Kelly, Lynn, Wainwright, Marinez) | 620 | 3.61 | 3.08 | 7.8 |
2026 (Skubal, Skenes, Ryan, McLean) | 602 | 2.47 | 5.45 | 20.5 |
While next spring's rotation falls short on innings (and only because of the inclusion of McLean, who did not make his big-league debut until mid-August), they have large advantages in every other listed category -- even Wins Above Replacement, a counting stat that should favor the innings leader.
Of course, there are no guarantees in baseball, least of all in a tournament setting. On paper, though, the Americans would seem poised to make another deep run on the strength of their rotation. In fact, they're the favorites to win it all (+130, per Caesars), ahead of Japan (+300), the Dominican Republic (+450) and Puerto Rico (+950).
The next iteration of the WBC, the sixth since the international tournament was forged a few decades ago, will commence next March. The Americans have won just one of the first five WBC, with that victory coming in 2017.
