WBC truly was a classic: Hamilton

‘It was the perfect tournament,’ says Peterborough native who was Canada’s pitching coach

The World Baseball Classic finally fulfilled its potential and will only get better, says Greg Hamilton.

Having the best player in the world today, Shohei Ohtani, pitching to the best player of his generation, Mike Trout, with the WBC title on the line with a full count and two out in the ninth inning was a storybook ending.

To feature the world’s two largest baseball nations — Japan and the United States — created the worldwide attention the WBC has sought, said Hamilton, director of Baseball Canada’s national teams and a Peterborough native.

The buy-in this year’s edition got from its star players, particularly the U.S., will take the tournament to another level, he said.

“It was the perfect tournament,” said Hamilton, who also served as Team Canada’s pitching coach.

“I think (the WBC) was at a little bit of a crossroads in terms of catching on. It needed to catch and if it didn’t catch it was going to be this event that could be so much more and never really became so much more. This one caught. It got everything it needed at the end.”

To have Trout come out and state he’s all-in for the next tournament and for American superstar Trea Turner, a World Series winner with the Los Angeles Dodgers, to call it the best experience of his career is going to give licence to players in the future to leave their MLB teams in spring training to opt-in.

Hamilton says international teams have always had that buy-in from their stars but North American clubs haven’t. In Canada’s case, a handful of MLB players declined invitations — for various reasons from injury to personal to thinking it would improve their chance to solidify their MLB status by staying at spring training. It forced Canada to field minor-league and retired players to fill out its roster.

Canada came as close as it ever has to advancing out of pool play with a 2-2 record. It beat Colombia 5-0 and Great Britain 18-8 while losing 12-1 to the U.S. and 10-3 to Mexico in a game where the winner advanced. Add in those handful of MLB players and Hamilton believes it could have made a difference.

Freddie Freeman (whose mother once lived in Peterborough), who suffered a hamstring injury in the second game, Tyler O’Neill, Port Hope native Cal Quantrill and Matt Brash were the biggest MLB names on the roster.

“If you could put our dream team on the field — the U.S. got theirs positionally, they didn’t get it pitching-wise — I think we can compete with anybody in the tournament on any given day. Anybody, including Japan and the United States,” Hamilton said.

“You’re going to run out James Paxton, Cal Quantrill, Mike Soroka and a middle of the bullpen that has Rowan Wick to Matt Brash to Jordan Romano and we haven’t even gone through all the major-league arms. You’d now have a middle of the order that has Freddie Freeman, Tyler O’Neill, Josh Naylor, Joey Votto. You lengthen everything out and we can compete with anybody.”

Canada doesn’t have the depth to afford to lose those MLB players, he said.

“It’s a major-league tournament if you’re going to try to go deep in it,” Hamilton said.

“I don’t think we underachieved. I don’t think we overachieved. I think we achieved. If you looked at our pool coming in, our script was to manage our way into that Canada-Mexico game with the winner moves on.”

Canada showcased some of its top MLB prospects such as Bo Naylor, Edouard Julien and Owen Casey, which bodes well for the future.

“We got as far as we could have hoped to be. We hoped we could sneak it out against Mexico and we were close to doing it and realistically were probably short two to three arms,” Hamilton said.