The World Baseball Classic: Its History
A history of the World Baseball Classic from the first tournament in 2006 through 2023, with the champions, the format, the rules that make it different and the stories of each edition.
The World Baseball Classic is the closest baseball has come to a World Cup. Every few years national teams made up of the sport's best players, drawn from the major leagues, Japan's professional league, Korea, Cuba, Mexico and dozens of other places, play a tournament in March, under rules written for the event, for a title that no club can win. Five tournaments were completed from 2006 through 2023, and between them they produced three different champions: Japan three times, and the Dominican Republic and the United States once each.
The tournament has a distinct place in the sport's calendar. It is not a replacement for the Olympics, where baseball has come and gone, and it is not part of the major-league season, though major-league clubs supply many of its players. This article covers why it exists, how it works, what happened in each of the five editions through 2023, and what to keep in mind when reading its statistics. Later editions fall outside its scope, and anyone who wants the most recent results should check the tournament's official site.
Why a Classic
Before 2006, international baseball had two main stages. The Olympic Games included baseball as a medal sport from 1992 to 2008, but the Olympic tournaments did not include major leaguers, because the Games fall in the middle of the major-league season. The other stages were regional events and international tournaments among national amateur and professional teams. The best players in the world rarely played one another under a national flag.
The World Baseball Classic was created to change that. It is organized by Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association, with the cooperation of the international federations and of professional leagues around the world. Its scheduling is deliberate: it takes place in March, around spring training, so that major leaguers can play without interrupting their season, and the first edition was held in 2006. The Olympic tournament, for its part, was dropped after the 2008 Games and returned much later; the story is told in baseball at the Olympics.
The tournament is meant to promote the sport abroad as well as to crown a champion. It is also a tournament whose rules can be changed from edition to edition, and they have been.
How the tournament works
Some details have varied between editions, so the following is the general shape, and the tournament's own rules for each edition are the authority.
The field. The first four editions, 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2017, had 16 teams. The 2023 edition expanded to 20. Some places were awarded automatically, based on past results, and the rest were decided through qualifying events. The 2023 field included first-time participants and teams from places where baseball is a young sport.
The format. Teams are divided into pools and play within them first. The best teams in each pool advance to later rounds, which in the early editions involved a second pool stage and later involved knockout play. The 2023 format was five pools of four teams, the top two in each pool advancing to single-elimination quarterfinals, followed by semifinals and a final. Earlier editions used other designs, including double elimination in some rounds.
Eligibility. A player may represent a country according to rules that are broader than citizenship alone. Birth, a parent's birth and eligibility for citizenship can all matter. The effect is that some teams, such as Italy, Israel and Great Britain, have fielded rosters that include many American-born players who qualify through family. This is a feature of the tournament and one of its most debated.
Pitch limits. Because the games are played in March, when pitchers are not at their full midseason workload, the tournament limits how many pitches a pitcher may throw in a game, with higher limits in later rounds, and requires rest days after higher pitch counts. The limits in the original editions were 65 pitches in the first round, 80 in the second and 95 in the knockout games. The limits protect arms, and they also mean starters leave games early and bullpens work a lot.
Mercy rule and tiebreakers. A mercy rule ends a game when one team leads by a wide margin after a set number of innings, and a tiebreaker rule puts runners on base in extra innings, so that a game does not run for hours.
The five tournaments at a glance
| Year | Champion | Runner-up | Final score | Final played in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | Japan | Cuba | 10-6 | San Diego |
| 2009 | Japan | South Korea | 5-3 (10 innings) | Los Angeles |
| 2013 | Dominican Republic | Puerto Rico | 3-0 | San Francisco |
| 2017 | United States | Puerto Rico | 8-0 | Los Angeles |
| 2023 | Japan | United States | 3-2 | Miami |
The most valuable player of each tournament was Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2006 and 2009, Robinson Cano in 2013, Marcus Stroman in 2017 and Shohei Ohtani in 2023. Two things stand out in the table. The first is Japan's record: three titles in five tries, more than anyone else. The second is that three different countries have won it, with a Latin American champion in 2013 and an American one in 2017.
2006: the first tournament
The inaugural tournament opened with 16 teams and an open question about whether the major leaguers would take it seriously. The answer was that many of them did, though the field was uneven: some national teams were full of major leaguers and others included few. Japan, with a roster of players from its own professional league and several who had moved to the majors, won the title by beating Cuba 10-6 in the final in San Diego. Cuba, whose players were not part of the major leagues, finished second. The United States did not reach the final.
The result set a pattern. National teams with strong domestic leagues could compete at the top, and the tournament would not be a showcase for the United States alone. Japan's title was a statement in a country where baseball is a major sport and where the national team's success is covered as national news. The pipeline of Japanese talent that feeds the majors is the subject of the posting system for Japanese players, and the roots of that talent in amateur ball are described in Koshien and Japanese high school baseball.
2009: Japan again, and the Dutch surprise
The second tournament, in 2009, repeated the pattern with a twist. Japan again reached the final, this time against South Korea, and won 5-3 in ten innings in Los Angeles, with Matsuzaka named the tournament's most valuable player a second time. South Korea had been a strong presence from the start, and the final extended an Asian run that dominated the first two events.
The 2009 tournament also produced one of its great surprises. The Netherlands, a team that combined players from the Netherlands and its Caribbean territories, several with major-league experience, beat the Dominican Republic in the first round, in a result that was widely described as one of the biggest upsets of the early tournaments. The Dutch would reach the semifinals in 2013, which showed that the earlier result was not a fluke. The United States, for its part, reached the semifinals in 2009 and lost there to Japan.
2013: the Dominican Republic goes undefeated
The Dominican Republic won the 2013 title without losing a game, finishing the tournament unbeaten and beating Puerto Rico 3-0 in the final in San Francisco. The team was made up largely of major leaguers, and it was the first Latin American country to win the event. The Netherlands, as noted, reached the semifinals, and the United States was eliminated in the second round.
The 2013 tournament also marked the start of a more regular qualifying system. After the first two editions, in which 16 teams were chosen by invitation, the 2013 edition used a combination of automatic places and qualifying events, so that results mattered for later tournaments. That change made the tournament more like a conventional international competition and less like an exhibition.
2017: the United States wins
The 2017 edition gave the United States its first title. The team reached the final and beat Puerto Rico 8-0 in Los Angeles, and Marcus Stroman, a starting pitcher, was named the most valuable player. Puerto Rico, which had lost the 2013 final, lost another, and is the only team to have reached two finals through 2023 without winning either.
For the United States, the title answered a persistent question about whether American major leaguers were committed to the event. In 2006 and 2013 the team had been eliminated in the second round, and in 2009 in the semifinals. The 2017 title did not settle the argument about the tournament's importance, but it removed the idea that the United States was indifferent to it.
2023: Ohtani, Trout and twenty teams
The fifth tournament came in 2023, after the 2021 edition was postponed. It expanded to 20 teams, added first-time participants and took place in several host cities, with the later rounds in Miami. The field included national teams from Europe and Asia for whom reaching the main draw was a major achievement, among them the Czech Republic, whose roster included many players with other jobs, a story that attracted worldwide interest.
The tournament ended in a final between Japan and the United States. The score was 3-2 in Japan's favour, and the last out was a strikeout of Mike Trout by Shohei Ohtani, who was named the tournament's most valuable player. The image, of the two best-known players in the sport facing each other with a championship at stake, is the one most associated with the tournament. Cuba and Mexico also reached the semifinals in 2023, and the diversity of the final four, with teams from North America, the Caribbean and Asia, reflected the event's goal of drawing in the whole sport.
It was Japan's third title in five tournaments. The remaining details of each game are available in the official records, and readers should look there for box scores and individual statistics.
What the Classic has changed
Four things stand out after five tournaments.
First, it has given baseball an international scoreboard. The sport has never had a regular world championship, and for the countries where it is popular, the Classic has become the benchmark. Japan's three titles were widely celebrated there, and the Dominican Republic's unbeaten run in 2013 is remembered as a national triumph.
Second, it has made national-team identity a part of the major-league story. Players who represent Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Mexico, the Dominican Republic or Japan clearly treat it as a major honor, and the United States' 2017 and 2023 teams showed the same commitment.
Third, it has widened the map. The 2023 edition included teams from places that were not part of baseball's story a generation ago. Baseball in Canada and baseball in Australia both have long histories that the tournament has brought to a wider audience.
Fourth, it has raised questions that have not been settled. Some clubs have expressed concern about the risk of injury to pitchers in a tournament held in March, and the tournament's pitch limits and rest rules are a response to that concern. The tension between national pride and club interest is a permanent part of the event's story.
Reading Classic statistics with care
Tournament statistics are not in the historical record, which covers regular-season and postseason major-league play, so the figures for individual players come from the tournament's own records. A few cautions apply.
The samples are small. A player may appear in fewer than ten games, which is too few to say much about his ability. A batting average or earned run average from a short event can be extreme in either direction.
The conditions are unusual. The games are played in March, pitchers are on pitch limits, and many players are still building up to full strength. A pitcher's strikeout rate may reflect a limit on the number of pitches he can throw before he leaves.
The opposition varies. In pool play a team may face opponents of very different strength, which makes comparisons across teams unreliable. For young players, who sometimes see the tournament as a model, the lessons are better drawn from the fundamentals described in hitting fundamentals for young players than from a few games.
Common questions
How many World Baseball Classics have there been through 2023? Five: 2006, 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2023. The 2021 edition was postponed, and the next edition after 2023 is outside this article.
Who has won the most? Japan, with three titles: 2006, 2009 and 2023.
Who won the first one? Japan, who beat Cuba 10-6 in the 2006 final.
Which teams have lost the final more than once? Puerto Rico lost the 2013 and 2017 finals, and no other team has been runner-up twice in the five tournaments listed.
Do the best players take part? Many do, but not all. Participation depends on health, club agreements and each player's decision, so the rosters of different countries vary in strength.
How is it different from the postseason? It is a separate tournament, in March, with national teams, pitch limits and its own tiebreaker rules. The major-league postseason is a different competition, described in how the MLB postseason works.
Where to go next
For the wider picture of baseball outside the United States, read baseball at the Olympics, the posting system for Japanese players and Koshien and Japanese high school baseball. The site's international pages cover world baseball, and the world baseball topic page collects further reading.