WORLD BASEBALL CLASSIC POOLS

■ Pool A, Seoul, South Korea

Chinese Taipei, Israel, Netherlands, South Korea ■ Pool B, Tokyo

Australia, China, Cuba, Japan ■ Pool C, Miami, Florida

Canada, Colombia, Dominican Republic, United States ■ Pool D, Jalisco, Mexico Italy, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Venezuela NOTE: Top two teams from each pool advance to second round than 2 percent of the $5.5 billion projected by FIFA for next year’s World Cup in Russia.

While the World Cup is soccer’s ultimate event, many players decline to participate in the WBC, which is played while their clubs are at spring training ahead of season openers that start April 2.

Japan won the initial tournament in 2006 and repeated as champion in 2009, but Houston Astros outfielder Norichika Aoki will be the only Japanese player in MLB who will be at the WBC this time.

“It comes down to a personal decision, and they have all of these competing interests that they have to contend with in terms of their own preparation and length of the season,” players’ union senior labor counsel Ian Penny said.

Major leaguers on 25-man rosters were not allowed at the last Olympic baseball tournament in 2008 and they aren’t likely to be at the 2020 Tokyo Games, given MLB’s unwillingness to interrupt its season. That leaves the WBC as the sport’s international showcase.

Soccer’s World Cup usually is played at the end of most European club seasons — the 2022 tournament in Qatar will be an anomaly, shifted to Nov. 21-Dec. 18 because of the summer heat.

Baseball prefers preseason, even though it means pitch limits in the WBC because arm strength is still building.

“Every time you start to drill down into a particular time of year and look at the logistics and look at the pros and cons, what sounds like an easy fix suddenly becomes a lot more complicated,” Penny said.

A postseason tournament that starts in early-to-mid November would leave pitchers from eliminated clubs waiting around to resume competition.

“You don’t make the playoffs and your last game is Oct. 1 — you have to wait around for five weeks to keep throwing to get ready for a WBC that you’re not going to want to embarrass yourself,” Leiter said. “Impossible.”