There Might be Reason For Seattle Mariners to be Wary of World Baseball Classic

The Seattle Mariners are still trying to make a push for the postseason this season, and the roster is focused on making that a reality in 2025. But for 2026, the team will be without several key players for a portion of spring training.

Cal Raleigh was announced as the starting catcher for Team USA's 2026 World Baseball squad. Julio Rodriguez was on the 2023 Dominican Republic WBC team, Randy Arozarena was on Team Mexico in 2023 and top 100 infielder Michael Arroyo was on Colombia's qualifying round roster earlier this year. There's reason to expect that those aforementioned players will be on their respective country's WBC rosters again in 2026, and there could be more Seattle players announced to compete in the international tournament before the rosters are finalized.

For fans of the Mariners and viewers of the international tournament, it will be a good watching experience to see more top-tier talent in the tournament.

Executives and managers might not be as thrilled.

In a recent episode of the Refuse to Lose podcast, ESPN insider Buster Olney spoke with Mariners on SI's own Brady Farkas to expand upon how teams feel about their start athletes competing in the international tournament:

"If you're looking at it purely from the Mariners' perspective, you're thinking 'that's not a good thing.' And I can tell you that there will be people within the Mariners organization who will feel the same way. So many times during the WBC since they've started it, you're having a conversation in spring training with a manager, a coach, a general manager and they are very wistful about 'yeah, we eight guys out of camp,' 'yeah we got 10 guys out of camp,' 'yeah we have three guys out of camp. We really want them back.' And privately, they're kind of rooting for those guys to get knocked out early. ... These are guys who are the absolute backbone of what they're trying to accomplish at the big league level."

You can listen to the entire conversation here: