Fantasy baseball: Should you avoid drafting players taking part in the WBC?

The sixth edition of the World Baseball Classic, or WBC, begins on Wednesday, bringing with it levels of excitement, intensity and patriotism that makes it one of the game’s most celebrated tournaments.

At the same time, the WBC brings with it concerns, among baseball fans and fantasy managers alike, that the timing of the tournament imposes in-season consequences upon the players involved. It takes them away from their MLB teams for a significant chunk of spring training, placing them in the hands of managers who aren’t typically theirs, in roles that aren’t necessarily familiar, and in games with levels of intensity in direct contrast to those they would typically endure in March.

It’s perfectly understandable that fantasy managers might be carrying similar worries into their 2026 draft prep, knowing that another edition of the WBC is directly ahead of us. After all, the last WBC brought us a pair of hugely fantasy-relevant injuries: Edwin Diaz suffered a season-ending torn patellar tendon in his knee while celebrating a Team Puerto Rico victory, while Jose Altuve missed the season’s first 43 games due to a fractured right thumb suffered when he was hit by a pitch in a WBC game.

In both of those cases, however, their injuries were a result of entirely fluky circumstances — hardly different from any they might face at any stage during the regular season or postseason. Additionally, the prognosis for both, fortunately, was known before a significant number of fantasy drafts had occurred. Don’t mistake random occurrence for an actionable trend.

Is there any actual impact to playing in the WBC?

Taking a broad view of the past five WBCs (taking place in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2017 and 2023) player statistics in the regular seasons that followed didn’t suffer nearly the amount of overall downturn as you might suspect. To best illustrate this for fantasy baseball planning purposes, I pulled data for all top-200 overall draft picks in ESPN leagues on average in those five seasons, separating them into two groups: Those who participated in the WBC and those who did not.

On the hitting side, the impact of WBC involvement was almost nonexistent, if not ever-so-slightly beneficial. Hitters among the top-200 overall ADP saw less than one-tenth of a fantasy point per game decline in production compared to the season before or to their three-year averages. WBC participants’ drop-off was 0.04 points per game less than those who skipped the tournament. At any rate, the difference was negligible on all fronts, meaning fantasy managers should adopt a hearty indifference to the decisions by Randy Arozarena, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Aaron Judge, Jung Hoo Lee, Jakob Marsee, Shohei Ohtani or Vinnie Pasquantino to play.

All of these hitters are subject to a similar level of unexpected injury within an WBC game as, say, an Altuve in 2023, but there’s no reason otherwise to assume any impact on their regular-season stats.

Throwing caution to the wind?

The pitching side of things, however, did reflect an adverse impact upon players’ participation — and perhaps predictably, it manifested itself more on the starting pitching than relief pitching side.

Among the 45 top-200 fantasy starting pitcher picks who participated in the past five WBCs, fantasy production declined by 1.58 points per game compared to the year before, and 0.72 relative to their prior three seasons. Additionally, their ERAs rose by more than a half a run (0.54, to be specific) compared to the year before and 0.44 relative to their prior three-year average. This group also averaged 3.3 fewer starts and 26.8 fewer innings pitched than they totaled the prior year.

That shouldn’t come as a shock, considering that participating starting pitchers would be ramping up their pitch counts and throwing higher-stress pitches in games at an earlier stage of year than they would be in a non-WBC season. It’s not unreasonable to think that doing so heightens their risk of either injury — reflected by the starts and innings declines above — or a downturn in their performance.

To that point, the decline exhibited by the collective WBC starting pitcher pool in those five years was largely influenced by a handful of extreme bust years dragging down the averages. A whopping 24% of the WBC pool saw at least a 200-point decline in fantasy points during the regular season compared to the prior year, whereas only 14% of the top-200 ADP pool who didn’t participate saw that large a drop-off. This group of WBC participants who suffered sharp declines included:

• Bartolo Colon (2006), who went from an AL Cy Young Award winner to a pitcher struggling with shoulder issues on his way to a 10-start, 5.11-ERA season.

• Edinson Volquez (2009), who made nine starts with a 4.35 ERA before succumbing to Tommy John surgery in June.

• Daisuke Matsuzaka (2009), who won a second straight WBC MVP Award, but made only 12 starts with a 5.76 ERA and battled arm fatigue thereafter.

• R.A. Dickey (2013), who followed up his NL Cy Young Award season with a stat line that saw his ERA rise by nearly a run and a half.

• Ryan Vogelsong (2013), who posted a 7.19 ERA across his first nine starts before missing almost three months with a broken hand suffered on a hit by pitch.

• Drew Smyly (2017), who never threw a pitch for the Seattle Mariners before requiring Tommy John surgery in July.

• Sandy Alcantara (2023), who went from NL Cy Young Award winner to 28 starts of a 4.14 ERA before undergoing Tommy John surgery in September.

• Yu Darvish (2023), who posted his highest full-season ERA (4.56) in any of his 12 seasons in the U.S. up to that point.

• Luis Garcia (2023), who lasted only six regular-season starts before requiring season-ending Tommy John surgery.

• Julio Urias (2023), whose NL-leading 2.16 ERA in 2022 rose by nearly two and a half full runs.

Should we be afraid?

A common thread among the pitchers listed above is that they all had unexpectedly excellent campaigns the prior year, which certainly helped earn them their WBC roster spots in the first place, but also placed them subject to a greater degree of regression than the average pitcher, independent of their participation. This takeaway could, and perhaps should, cause fantasy managers to be slightly more cautious with expectations from 2025 breakthroughs and 2026 WBC participants Matthew Boyd, Clay Holmes, Cristopher Sanchez and Ranger Suarez. That’s not a blanket “do not draft these guys” edict, but rather a note of caution to carefully follow their WBC usage and post-tournament spring returns, as well as to be reasonable with their draft-day valuations.

Another point to glean from past WBC seasons is that the starting pitching pool, besides its somewhat heightened level of risk, commonly suffered only temporary statistical setback before rebounding into prior form later in the year. This isn’t an unusual finding, as many pitchers experience a “dead arm” period late in spring training, and the change in March routine could either heighten or delay such a seasonal stage.

WBC-participating starting pitchers in the study averaged only 6.68 fantasy points per game through the month of April in those seasons, but 6.99 over the remainder of the year, whereas members of the ADP top 200 who did not play in the WBC were actually better per-game performers in March/April (8.75 points) than over the rest of the year (8.44). That could mean an early-season buying opportunity for WBC starting pitchers, assuming they make it through the first month unscathed on the injury front and your league’s mark-down on their price tags is reasonable enough.

The upshot: If, say, Nolan McLean’s draft-day price is through the roof, but he endures a disappointing April, trading for him on May 1 much prove a wiser fantasy strategy than paying the premium in March and hoping he suffers no WBC ill effects. However, as for Vladimir Guerrero Jr., or even Mason Miller, I’m not shifting one bit off their second- and fourth-round ADP valuations as a result of their playing in the WBC.