Javier Báez will go to the Clásico with Puerto Rico

Next year’s World Baseball Classic will have a magic touch. On Wednesday, Javier “The Magician” Baez announced his commitment to represent Puerto Rico in the 2023 event. The infielder participated in the 2017 Clásico, when the Puerto Ricans finished in second place after losing the final against the United States team.

Although Báez has struggled this year on offense, hitting .230/.272/.369 in his first year with the Tigers, the 29-year-old slugger still has power in his bat, hitting 24 doubles and 12 home runs so far.

Puerto Rico hopes that Báez can recapture the form he showed in the 2017 event, when he was selected as part of the All World Baseball Classic Team. That year, he hit .296, drove in five runs, stole four bases and made one of the most memorable plays of the Classic when he tagged Nelson Cruz blindly, celebrating before getting out.

Puerto Rico, which has finished in second place in the last two editions of the contest, will seek to win the coveted title starting in Group D, which it will share with Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Israel and one of the teams that come out of the qualifiers.

Michael Clair/MLB.com

Gabriel Delgado

I started as a rookie at Al Bat in early 2018 and am in my third season covering Major League Baseball as a web reporter. I’m a fan of the San Francisco Giants, number one defender of Barry Bonds, and hater of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Fernando Tatis Jr., Juan Soto and Ronald Acuña are the future of baseball, Mike Trout is overrated, and the Astros deserved to have the World Series taken from them for their cheating. Besides baseball, I also enjoy football, flag football, basketball, and just about any other game that involves a ball or ball. I’m also an amateur musician, a penniless gamer and very nerdy. Graduated in journalism from the University of Guadalajara, I graduated in 2017. Born in the world capital of shrimp, Escuinapa, Sinaloa. I lived for a while in Australia; I survived giant spiders, tasmanian devils and fought a kangaroo and didn’t die trying.

see more