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How Might the World Baseball Classic Affect the Beginning of the Phillies’ Season?
By Nick Piccone
Published:
The 2026 World Baseball Classic is right around the corner, and this year’s tournament features, once again, quite a few Phillies. As of writing, there are seven players with prominent roles on the big club that will be participating: Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, Cristopher Sánchez, Aaron Nola, Taijuan Walker, Brad Keller, and Edmundo Sosa. Three other Phillies we may see during the course of the 2026 season have also been confirmed: Garrett Stubbs, Johan Rojas, and Alan Rangel, who made his Major League debut in 2025.
This has led to one of the most age-old sports discussions – should the Phillies players be more concerned about getting ready for the Major League Baseball season, or is it worth it to represent your country in a global tournament?
I think most of the arguments stem from the tournament’s timing, but I’m not here to argue for or against player participation. I want to look a bit deeper to see if playing in a high-intensity global preseason tournament lends itself to a drop in the usual production of said player, especially early in the season.
The biggest story of the 2023 WBC locally was Turner mashing everything in sight, including clutch hit after clutch hit. In six games, he had five home runs and 11 RBIs with a 1.483 OPS. His grand slam against Venezuela in the 2023 Quarterfinal will forever be etched in my brain:
J.T. Realmuto was right behind him at 1.200 OPS in four games, and Schwarber was at 1.093 in five games. It felt like the 2023 Phillies might get off to a hot start if those three kept the bats rolling.
Unfortunately, we know what happened to Turner’s bat. In 88 games before the All-Star break, he had 10 homers and 32 RBIs with a .687 OPS. He turned his season completely around in August, but those four months before that were a long four months.
In 2024, Turner’s first half OPS was .941 in 57 games before a hamstring injury derailed what could have been a monster season. In 2025, he finished the first half (94 games) with 112 hits, 11 homers, and 40 RBIs. His OPS was .776, but he did finish the second half with a .882 OPS, though he spent some time on the injured list in September with another hamstring injury, but it wasn’t nearly as serious as 2024.
I think, in Turner’s case, the high of his incredible WBC performance in 2023 certainly put more pressure on himself as he was heading into his first year in red pinstripes.
Schwarber started the 2023 season hitting 22 homers and 49 RBIs (we all remember the solo dingers) with a .736 OPS in the first 89 games. In the proceeding 71 games, he mashed 25 homers and had 55 RBIs with a .919 OPS. In the first half of 2024, he hit 19 homers with 54 RBIs and a .830 OPS. He ended that season with 19 homers, 50 RBIs, and a .876 OPS. And in his monster year of 2025, his OPS was .923 in the first half and .933 in the second half of the season. I’m sure it being a contract year played a role, but it also shows that in that three-year window, his worst OPS in the first half was coming off of the World Baseball Classic.
Realmuto hit 10 homers with 34 RBIs in his first 79 games with a .766 OPS in 2023. In the second half, he hit 10 homers with 29 RBIs and a .757 OPS. The 2024 season was a weird one for him, as he missed time after knee surgery. In 51 games in the first half of 2024, he hit seven homers and had 20 RBIs with a .720 OPS, and played 48 games in the second half with a .788 OPS, hitting seven homers and knocking in 27. In 2025, Realmuto’s offense fell off a cliff, so the Phillies would be lucky for him to amass those numbers in 2026. He is currently not scheduled to participate in the 2026 WBC.
Walker will pitch for Team Mexico again. In 2023, he pitched four innings against Great Britain, striking out eight and giving up zero runs. Walker was a recipient of some good luck in the first half of the 2023 season, going 10-3 but having a 4.02 ERA in 96.1 innings. There seems to be minimal correlation for this one.
José Alvarado only pitched three times in the 2023 WBC, and after missing 80 games last year and not being available for the playoffs, maybe some high-leverage baseball would be good for him.
In the case of Nola, he’s thrown almost 1,800 MLB innings since 2015 and it’s fair to ask about workload after he dealt with injury in 2025. Sanchez enters the season as the Phillies’ ace, throwing a career-high 202 regular season innings and 12 playoff innings last season. That’s half of the Phillies’ top four, with Zack Wheeler on the shelf and Jesus Luzardo deciding not to throw for Venezuela this time around.
There is glitz and glamour that comes with playing in the World Baseball Classic, even if this is the first time you’re hearing about it. It’s a fun tournament, and fun to watch the intensity it brings before the MLB season begins. Obviously, we’d all love to see our guys come out of there healthy and ready to tackle the 162 game grind, but maybe the intensity of the tournament is what they need. We already think they’re a complacent bunch, but could this tourney be the jolt they desperately need?
Nick Piccone has covered Philly sports and events for over 14 years with various outlets, including PhillyVoice and Philly Influencer. In 2015, he co-launched the Straight Shooters Wrestling Podcast. He's also a producer for Fox Sports Radio Philadelphia and the Villanova Sports Radio Network. He grew up in South Philadelphia and South Jersey, and is a graduate of Neumann University. Contact: picconenick@gmail.com