Its participants embrace the World Baseball Classic, but leaving an MLB team during spring training throws off routine. How that’s affected a number of players who were in this year’s 20-nation event is uncertain. But plenty are mired in subpar starts to the 2026 season.
The World Baseball Classic has always been something of a party and a means of bringing the world together to celebrate the game of baseball. There’s dancing in the seats, bat flips on the field, and anyone within a few blocks of Miami’s loanDepot Park likely still has salsa music ringing in their ears from back in March.
However, like with many parties, some participants are often left groggy and weary and dealing with hangovers that tend to linger. For many of the players who took tremendous pride in representing their countries and speak of the game action and party-like vibes with great reverence, they are still feeling the sting of a hangover from the WBC – with some MLB teams already 50 games into their 2026 season.
Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh and San Diego Padres superstars Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado are among the poster boys for players who have struggled in the first two months of the 2026 MLB season, which followed playing for their countries in the WBC. (See 2026 traditional and advanced stats on our MLB Leaderboards.)
Two Chicago Cubs – Alex Bregman, whose OPS+ (the sum of on-base and slugging percentages while accounting for ballpark factors) in 2026 is 34.3 points below his career average, and Pete Crow-Armstrong, who’s down 20.5 OPS+ points from his standout 2025 season – have seen regressions after playing for the United States in the WBC.
The New York Yankees have stayed at the top of the AL East most of the season despite drop-offs from WBC players Austin Wells (down 38.1 OPS+ points from last season) and Jazz Chisholm (down 31.5). Aaron Judge, the Team USA captain who came under fire following his team’s bad loss to Italy and its lackluster offense in a title game defeat against Venezuela, has also seen his OPS+ fall (down 43.8 from last season and 8.6 below a stellar 181.6 career mark).
Yankees rivals? Well, Boston Red Sox outfielder Jarren Duran has suffered one of MLB’s more massive drop-offs after playing for Mexico, freefalling to a 66.0 OPS+ this season from last year’s 111.3. Baltimore Orioles shortstop Gunnar Henderson (Team USA) has an 88.1 OPS+ that’s 29.9 off last season and 38.7 below his career mark.
Injuries have factored in both during and after the WBC. Cubs outfielder Seiya Suzuki missed the first two weeks of the 2026 MLB season after suffering a knee injury in the WBC. Two-time AL Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal (Detroit Tigers), 2023 NL MVP Ronald Acuna (Atlanta Braves) and Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Jackson Chourio emerged from brief WBC appearances seemingly unscathed, but each later landed on the IL. Skubal, who could be in line for a $500 million payday in free agency, has to be wondering what role his one-game outing in the WBC (three innings, two hits, one earned run) had in his elbow barking and requiring surgery to remove loose bodies.
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7 months ago Taylor BechtoldEven two of the game’s brightest stars from last October’s epic seven-game World Series, Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodger and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays, have gotten off to sluggish starts at the plate after playing for Japan and the Dominican Republic, respectively. Ohtani, seemingly immune to slumps in a career that has already produced four MVP awards, has seen his hitting OPS+ plunge 32.2 points in 2026 from last year’s 179.2 (he’s also 13.1 below his career mark this season). As a result, the Dodgers have sought ways to give the two-way player some rest following back-to-back championship seasons and this year’s WBC.
Ohtani, who homered three times in the WBC, but flied out for the final out of an 8-5 loss to Venezuela in a stunning quarterfinal-round defeat, summed up his frustrations in an Instagram post as so: “I strongly feel my own shortcomings.”
As for Guerrero, his OPS+ is a pedestrian 111.4 in 2026 – more than 25 points below his career 136.6 – and he’s hit just three home runs, which is playing a role in Toronto’s tepid start to the season.
Of course, there have certainly been success stories coming out of the WBC – Mason Miller (San Diego Padres), Kyle Schwarber (Philadelphia Phillies), Byron Buxton (Minnesota Twins) and Ernie Clement (Blue Jays) to name some Team USA examples – but even they have been overshadowed by the stars who have inexplicably dipped once the WBC lights went down.
The common dominators of routine and consistency during a regular spring training are thrown off during the year of a WBC, which generally is held three years apart. Depending on how their nation does in the 20-nation tournament, players can be away from an MLB team for two to three weeks.
“You go from a spring training atmosphere to a playoff atmosphere (in the WBC) and then back to spring training and you’re trying to nail down a few things and hope you’re ready,” said Raleigh, who went 0 for 9 during the WBC. “To me, everything is about being consistent – staying in weight room, staying on top of things in the training room and I’ve got to stay healthy a full 162. Over the years, I’ve learned what I need to do – stay strong, stay healthy and do my prep work – so that things don’t come back and haunt me.”
Raleigh, Tatis, Machado Trying to Find Power
Raleigh, who captured the imagination of the baseball world in 2025 by winning the All-Star Home Run Derby, becoming both the first catcher and switch hitter in MLB history to smash 60 homers, has unwillingly become one of the focal points of the post-WBC malaise.
A year after finishing runner-up to Judge for AL MVP, Raleigh’s raw value+ is an almost-unthinkable 58 (league average is 100; he’s sixth lowest among qualifiers) and his OPS+ is 60 points below his career average (122.3). He, too, is on the IL (right oblique strain), hitting just .161, slugging only .317 and with eight times more strikeouts (57) than home runs (seven).
“I’m just trying to focus on the process and really trust the swing because I know the swing is good and it’s the same swing I’ve had since I was 9 years old,” Raleigh said. “I’m just trying to trust the plan, commit to every pitch and try to win one pitch at a time, and find the small victories where I can.”
Then, there’s the curious case of Tatis, who also has mysteriously lost his swing after prepping most of the winter to play for the Dominican Republic in the WBC. When last we saw him blasting a three-run homer against Venezuela, the ball might have found the seats before his bat landed on the turf following a highly charged bat flip.
Tatis, who also smashed a grand slam against Israel, was hit with a downright puzzling power outage once he left Miami and returned to the Padres. Through his first 47 games and 177 at-bats of the season, he’s failed to homer. “El Nino,” as he has been affectionately known to other Dominican stars, has been inexplicably downgraded to a tropical storm and has looked nothing like the three-time All-Star he was before the 2026 WBC.
While Tatis has seen his 2026 OPS+ (76.7) plummet 60.5 points from last season, he’s refused to blame his WBC participation, saying, “I definitely had a blast (at the WBC). I wanted to give everything that I have for my country. I wanted to show them all what I am capable of doing on the baseball field, especially when I’m representing my country. I’m just glad I was able to give them a small taste.”
The 33-year-old Machado, a teammate of Tatis’s in the WBC as well as with the Padres, has also seen his 76.7 OPS+ way below his career average (123.2) because of a similar power outage. A year after hitting 27 homers and 33 doubles, he has just seven and five, respectively.
A positive for the Padres has been how Miller has used his strong work in the WBC to become the game’s most unhittable pitcher in 2026. After striking out 10 in four innings of WBC work, Miller has posted a microscopic 0.79 ERA and is 15 of 15 in save opportunities with chase, whiff and strikeout rates all ranking in MLB’s top 100th percentile, per Baseball Savant.
There are also league leaders such as Schwarber (Team USA), 20 home runs; the Miami Marlins’ Otto Lopez (Canada), .346 batting average and 66 hits; Phillies left-hander Christopher Sanchez (Dominican Republic), 64.1 innings; and Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes, 26 RV- (for pitchers, the lower, the better than the league-average 100).
Joy and Pain After WBC Title Game
One of the most enduring images of the WBC was brothers Willson and William Contreras accepting their gold medals together after Venezuela shocked the United States in the championship game. Willson, who was a member of the 2016 Cubs’ team that ended a 108-year World Series drought, said winning the WBC for his country was a feeling unlike any other he’s ever experienced.
“It was the best experience of my life,” the Red Sox leader in homers (10) and RBIs (30) said. “Playing in the WBC, playing for your country, playing for (28) million people (in Venezuela) means a lot to me. I enjoyed every single second. It was all for Venezuela and it wasn’t about Willson Contreras. It was about Venezuela and the whole country. I’m just so proud of the team they created and the family we created and I’m just so I’m happy that I became a WBC champion.”
Contreras’ Red Sox teammate Roman Anthony was on the losing side of the championship game, but he hasn’t let that overshadow what he considers to be the experience of a lifetime while playing for Team USA. Moreso than the games, Anthony said it was the team dinners, late-night skull sessions and quick camaraderie that left a mark on him from the WBC.
“We got so close, just from Day 1, there wasn’t really any feeling each other out and that (night of the championship loss) was the last time all of us are together in a locker room,” said Anthony, who homered twice in the WBC but has hit just one long ball in 30 games with the Red Sox this season. He’s been on the IL since May 7 with a wrist sprain. “We had some veteran guys like (Clayton Kershaw) ultimately at the back end (of their careers) and they wanted to take in every last moment, regardless of the outcome.
“We made relationships that have lasted. For me, being the young guy, I was trying to soak in every last moment I could.”
2023 Cardinals a WBC Cautionary Tale
Teams and players might have been able to see the WBC hangovers of this past spring coming had they paid attention to the 2023 St. Louis Cardinals. A year after winning 93 games and reaching the playoffs, the NL Central squad sent an MLB-high 24 players to that year’s WBC only to see their season later devolve into an unmitigated disaster.
With several weeks of missing the habits and routines drilled into them over the course of a normal spring training, the Cardinals not only ended a 15-season run of winning records in 2023, but they slumped to 71-91 and finished last in their division for the first time in 33 years.
Reigning NL MVP Paul Goldschmidt lost 107 points off his career OPS average, 80 points off his career slugging percentage and 23.2 points off his OPS+ career average in 2023 and began a career slide that he’s never recovered from.
Nolan Arenado, who finished third in the NL MVP voting in 2022, injured his throwing arm during the 2023 season and saw his streak of 10 consecutive Gold Gloves come to an unceremonious end. Massive drops in his OPS (.107 points), slugging (.076 points) and OPS+ (14.8 points) off his career averages before that season further complicated matters for Arenado and the Cardinals that season.
On the pitching side, Adam Wainwright missed pitching in the final opening day of his career – he sang the national anthem instead of pitching against the Blue Jays – after suffering arm and groin injuries in the WBC, and his ERA swelled from a career 3.38 to 7.40 in his final season. Miles Mikolas, who was upset that he rarely pitched in that WBC after becoming an All-Star a second time in 2022, saw his ERA climb more than a run over his MLB career average to that point following the runner-up finish to Ohtani’s Japan squad.
This season, the team that seems to be suffering a similar fate to the Cardinals in 2023 are the Kansas City Royals, who are coming off their first back-to-back winning seasons in 10 years. After sending a host of players to the WBC, they’re on a pace of 16 fewer wins than last year.
Team USA shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. has a 5.6-point OPS+ improvement from last season, but the other face of the franchise, catcher Salvador Perez, a veteran leader on the Venezuelan team that won it all, has a 64.5 OPS+ that’s 39 points under his career average.
Vinnie Pasquantino, who helped turn Italy into the feel-good story of the WBC, was a career .266 hitter before this season but his batting average is just .194 in 2026. Similarly, his slugging percentage (.456 to .326) and OPS (.787 to .604) have fallen off in 2026.
“Any time we’re scoring runs, it’s because our offense is clicking,” Witt Jr. said recently. “We’ve just got to get back to (stringing together multiple hits) and somehow playing good baseball again.”
Jesse Abrahams of Stats Perform’s U.S. Data Insights contributed research to this story. For more coverage, follow on social media at Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.
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