The World Baseball Classic rosters were announced on Wednesday night for all 16 teams. We knew ahead of time that a few big names from the Pittsburgh Pirates had committed early to the rosters. Andrew McCutchen announced his participation early, followed by Starling Marte and Francisco Cervelli at the same time. The rosters will include prospects Eric Wood, Luis Escobar and Jared Lakind. In total, they will have nine players listed for the tournament. Here is the list of Pirates, with an asterisks next to pitchers who could be added to the roster after the first round, but aren’t eligible in the first round.
USA: Andrew McCutchen
Dominican Republic: Starling Marte, Gregory Polanco, Ivan Nova*
Italy: Francisco Cervelli
Canada: Eric Wood
Colombia: Luis Escobar*
Israel: Jared Lakind
Australia: Sam Street
The games will be shown on MLB Network starting on March 6th and they will run until the finals on March 22nd, though half of the teams will be eliminated by March 12th. The full schedule can be seen here. The game with the most interest for Pirates fans would be the March 11th game (6:30 PM) between USA and the Dominican Republic in Miami. We will have coverage here during the tournament, usually listed among the Spring Training notes at that time. The busier days may have a separate article.
