World Baseball Classic roster roundup

Though it lacked the pomp and circumstance of the American roster unveiling, the remaining WBC rosters went public yesterday on the MLB Network. A flurry of big names and small surprises as fans tracked all the big name players filling out rosters for their respective homelands. Also: Willie Bloomquist!

Just like with the US team, some big name players chose not to represent their countries, opting to get into Spring Training with their club and get to work for the 2013 season. Albert Pujols won’t play for the second consecutive tournament and David Ortiz also offered the Sergeant Roger Murtaugh excuse for staying home.

But we cannot concern ourselves with who stays home, only with who will play. The tournament is fun with or without the biggest names, even though many superstars are indeed taking part.

As a brief reminder, the World Baseball Classic is broken up into four pools for group play (across multiple venues and countries), then a knockout round staged in Tokyo and Miami before the whole deal wraps up in San Francisco at AT&T Park.

The groups are as follows, with some notable names:

Pool A China (Bruce Chen!) Japan (Not Ichiro) Cuba (Men of unconfirmed birth dates, apparently) Brazil (Not Yan Gomes)	Pool B Korea (Lee Seung-yeop, Lee Dae-Ho, not that guy OR the other guy) Netherlands (Jair Jurrjens, Jurickson Profar, Xander Bogaerts, Andrelton Simmons) Australia (Ryan Rowland-Smith, Chris Snelling, other hypen-free baseball players.) Taiwan (Chein-Ming Wang, Hung-Chih Kuo, those two other guys whose names I should know but don’t)
Pool C  Venezuela (Felix Hernandez, Miguel Cabrera, Elvis Andrus, Pablo Sandoval) Puerto Rico (Carlos Beltran, Molina(s), Angel Pagan, Javier Vazquez) Dominican Republic (Adrian Beltre, Jose Reyes, Robinson Cano, Carlos Santana) Spain (Xavi, Andres Iniesta, Pique, Rhiner Cruz)	Pool D USA (Giancarlo Stanton, David Wright, Ryan Braun, Craig Kimbrel) Mexico (Adrian Gonzalez, Yovani Gallardo, Sergio Romo, Danny Espinosa) Canada (Russell Martin, Jameson Taillon, Justin Morneau, Brett Lawrie, Michael Saunders) Italy (Anthony Rizzo, Alex Liddi, Chris Denorfia, Drew Butera)

Venezuela looks like they might be pretty good, though it remains to be seen how much an advantage good starting pitching offers with the rules hamstringing that edge.

And the rest

Do comments from Astros GM Jeffrey Luhnow highlight the problem with the WBC? On the surface his comments are damning but the Fernando Martinez‘s of the world are not the players are clamoring to see. [Hardball Talk]

It will be a lot of fun to watch young studs like Jurickson Profar play in this event. [MLB.com]

FOURTEEN members of the Brewers organization will play in the WBC. FOURTEEN! [Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel]

Crashbag! [Crashburn Alley]

Scott Rolen is great. Was great. [Viva El Birdos]

Wait, the Blue Jays almost made a DIFFERENT blockbuster trade before dealing with the Marlins? [National Post]

Cleveland demands discipline from their young players. [Beyond the Boxscore]

Free Friday at Baseball Prospectus, go nuts! [#want]