5 Marlins — and 2 prospects — set to participate in World Baseball Classic
The Marlins will be well represented at the World Baseball Classic, with five players on the 40-man roster and two prospects set to participate in the event next month.
And all seven of them will play the entirety of the tournament, which begins for them on March 11 and runs through
March 21 if their teams make it all the way to the championship round, at Miami’s loanDepot park, which is the first ballpark to host in every phase of the tournament.
The core players from Miami’s roster participating: Right-handed pitchers Sandy Alcantara and Johnny Cueto as well as infielder Jean Segura for the Dominican Republic, and left-handed pitcher Jesus Luzardo and infielder Luis Arraez for Venezuela.
In addition to those five, two prospects — right-handed pitcher Anthony Maldonado (Puerto Rico) and lefthanded pitcher Enmanuel De Jesus (Venezuela) — are also on preliminary rosters.
Of the group, Cueto and Segura are the only ones to have participated in any of the previous four iterations of the World Baseball Classic.
Cueto, whom the Marlins signed to a one-year deal with a club option for the 2024 season, played
in the 2009 edition of the tournament, throwing 4 scoreless innings in the lone game he played against Panama. He did not play in the 2013 tournament due to injury and missed the 2017 tournament to be with his sick father.
Segura, who signed a two-year deal with the Marlins with a club option for 2025, played in the 2017 tournament for the Dominican Republic, which advanced to the quarterfinals. The infielder played in only two of the Dominican Republic’s six games during that tournament. He went 3 for 6 with two doubles, three RBI and two runs scored in an 11-inning, 10-3 win over Colombia to cap first-round action. His second of those doubles came with the bases loaded as part of a sevenrun
11th inning. He also went 1 for 5 in a loss against Puerto Rico in the second round of the tournament.
As for the Marlins’ other participants:
Alcantara has quickly evolved into one of baseball’s top pitchers. He won the National League Cy Young Award — the first to be won by a Marlins player — in unanimous fashion last season after leading the majors in innings pitched (228 and complete games (six) while also ranking fifth in ERA (2.28).
Luzardo is coming off a breakout season, albeit one that saw him miss extended time early due to injury. The 25-year-old lefty pitched a career-high 100 innings while striking out 120 batters, holding hitters to a .191 batting average against and posting a 3.32 ERA in 18 starts.
Arraez, whom Miami acquired in a trade with the Minnesota Twins last month, is the reigning American League batting champion after hitting .316 in 2022. The 25-year-old, heading into his fifth MLB season, has a career .314 batting average and .784 on-base-plus slugging mark while striking out in only 8.3 percent of his career plate appearances (131 strikeouts in 1,569 plate appearances).
Maldonado, 25, was the Marlins’ 11th-round pick in 2019. He has a career 3.23 ERA in the minor leagues and reached Triple A last season.
De Jesus, 26, signed a minor-league deal with the Marlins this offseason. He has played at the Triple A level the past two seasons and has a career 3.92 ERA over 159 minorleague games (including 117 starts).
The Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Israel and Nicaragua begin pool play at loanDepot park on March 11. All five teams will face each other once in a single round-robin tournament, with the top two teams from the pool advancing to the quarterfinals, which will take place on March 17 and 18. The semifinals are on March 19 and 20, with the championship on March 21.