David Wright announced today that he will be playing on Team USA in the
2009 World Baseball Classic. In 2006, Arod and Chipper Jones took over
the third base for USA but this year, Arod will be playing for the
Dominican Republic and now Wright will take that spot. Wright joins
Sizemore, Braun, Pedroria among others who announced over the last week
that they will play on Team USA.
There are many other Mets who
are planning on playing for other WBC teams. Beltran, Delgado, and
Feliciano all look to return to the Puerto Rico team, which they all
played for in 2006. Reyes looks to do the same for the Dominican
Republic team and Johan Santana and Krod look to return to Venezuela.
While
the WBC is slightly controversial, I have always been a fan because
there are several teams that basically run like All Star teams, and
they don't always win (Japan is the perfect example). The main
criticism of the WBC is that it screws with a teams ability to get
ready for the season. However, for the Mets, while it does cut down on
the time for the players to learn to play with eachother, the main
players that will be in the WBC already have set roles on the Mets and
now the Mets can spend more time looking at the young players in the
system and to see who could come up during the season or get a spot on
the team from the start.