Phillies

Putting Together an Irish Team for the World Baseball Classic

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Mar 12th, 2026 · 12:43 PM EDT

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Team Italy won Wednesday night in the World Baseball Classic, hammering Mexico 9-1.

Leading the way were Louisiana native Aaron Nola and Richmond native Vinnie Pasquantino, who hit three dingers. The squad is basically just American guys with paisan backgrounds, which begs the question:

Why doesn’t Ireland have a baseball team?

Italy just grabbed a bunch of guys from Jersey and called it a national roster.
Ireland could walk through Southie in Boston on a Saturday and field a full lineup by noon.

— Jordan Moore (@iJordanMoore) March 12, 2026

This is actually a great exercise.

Especially for an irreverent sports blog.

To start, we put the query through A.I. to see what came back:

Lineup

• C — Sean Murphy
• 1B — Ryan O’Hearn
• 2B — Jeff McNeil
• 3B — Matt Chapman
• SS — Dansby Swanson
• LF — Andrew Benintendi
• CF — Brandon Nimmo
• RF — Tyler O’Neill
• DH — Kyle Schwarber

Bench

• C — Danny Jansen
• INF — Jake Cronenworth
• INF — Kevin Newman
• OF — Mike Yastrzemski

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Starting Rotation

1. SP — Shane McClanahan
2. SP — Jack Flaherty
3. SP — Merrill Kelly
4. SP — Zac Gallen
5. SP — Patrick Corbin

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Bullpen

• CL — Liam Hendriks (Irish surname, Australian-American heritage mix)
• RP — Dylan Floro
• RP — Paul Sewald
• RP — John Brebbia
• RP — Tim Mayza
• RP — Sean Manaea

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Manager

• Terry Francona

Okay, first things first, Terry Francona and Brandon Nimmo are not Irish. They’re paisans. Nimmo played for Italy in previous WBCs but apparently has some Scottish on his dad’s side. Sean Manaea is definitely NOT Irish and has Samoan roots. Mike Yastrzemski is Polish. Schwarbs actually has Irish in him but is already committed to Team USA. Jack Flaherty identifies as black.

Putting aside the A.I. mistakes, we have a starting point. We can carve out a rotation of (healthy) Shane McClanahan, Nolan McLean, Zac Gallen, and Merrill Kelly. You’d want to throw Emmet Sheehan into the mix and flesh out a bullpen with other guys who may or may not be Irish, but have Irish-sounding last names.

The lineup looks pretty good. Sean Murphy at catcher. Ryan O’Hearn plays 1st base and we stick the annoying Jeff McNeil somewhere. Maybe in the outfield. Giancarlo Stanton, believe it or not, his dad is Irish, so we get him on the team. Same with Corbin Carroll. Carroll’s dad is Irish and his mom is from Taiwan. Mike Trout does have some Irish in him as well. Logan O’Hoppe HAS to be Irish and we might be able to flip dual-national Shohei O’Tani from Japan.

I think we’re off to a good start here. We do a little refining, a little more research and we have a formidable baseball squad to challenge the paisans.

(if you want a good explainer for why Ireland doesn’t have a WBC team, click here)

Remember, on St. Paddy’s Day everybody is Irish: