Joe Girardi’s Plan to Fix the World Baseball Classic

Joe Girardi has more important things to fix than the World Baseball Classic in my extremely invested, yet ultimately unimportant, opinion but that was just what he was talking about this week with the New York Times. Rather than spending time on who is going to take the fourth and fifth spots in the Yankees starting rotation or who is going to pitch in the middle innings each and every day the Yankees manager is discussing ways to improve the WBC so why not talk about it. If you can’t tell my sarcasm meter is going off the charts right now, let me reign that it. Be right back.

Okay, I’m back. Really though the Yankees manager has a plan and a few ideas to fix the World Baseball Classic. Let’s be real, the WBC needs fixing. Having these players play in games that are intense and as important as they are in the middle of March is simply irresponsible in my opinion and too many injuries are happening for a glorified exhibition tournament that represents your home land. Again, my opinion.

Girardi’s plan is simple, make the game that is loved worldwide and played in the warm weather months played in the warm weather months. Period. Girardi wants the WBC moved to the summer months instead of two or three weeks into Spring Training for many of these players that attend. Girardi suggests moving the first two rounds of the tournament back even a week or so to help players, and especially pitchers, have some work under their belts and on their arms before fulling letting it go in a WBC game. Girardi then suggests playing the semifinals and the finals during the downtime at the All Star Game every single season.

There’s some validity to the idea and the backlash of having the WBC played in early March. There are more elbow injuries that require Tommy John surgery in April than any other month and we’ve seen many injuries early in spring and during the WBC including Mark Teixeira’s wrist injury in 2013. Whether that will be taken into account after this WBC or not remains to be seen but what Girardi is saying, for once, makes sense. Let’s see if anyone is listening.