The 2026 World Baseball Classic is a year away, but Cuban players in Major League Baseball are being forced to confront a difficult choice well in advance of the tournament.
To play for Cuba, or to not play for Cuba? The answer, which naturally varies from player to player, depends upon myriad unique factors.
For some, like Yoan Moncada and Andy Ibanez, there is interest, as PelotaCubanaUSA’s Yusseff Diaz reported last week. Moncada and Ibanez both played for Cuba in 2023.
For Aroldis Chapman, however, there is none. None at all. And he didn’t mince words about it.
“I was a traitor. A worm and a traitor. And now they want us to go play,” Chapman told Swing Completo while he was a member of the Kansas City Royals. Swing Completo reported Chapman’s remarks this past week as Federacion Cubana de Beisbol officials announced they would ask players who had left the island nation, including those who had abandoned the national team while playing abroad, who had previously been barred from representing the island nation.
Chapman unsuccessfully attempted to defect from Cuba in 2008 and was ostracized. After returning from the 2009 World Baseball Classic, he decided to leave the island for good. When he succeeded in 2009, walking away from the Cuba national team in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, he left his family, including his girlfriend and newborn, behind.
“I think that all those people who are calling up the players who are [in the United States] and those who are going to the Classic, I think they are the first ones who should respect themselves and not be calling up all of us who are here,” Chapman, who signed with the Boston Red Sox as a free agent this past offseason, told Swing Completo. “After they have done everything they did to all of us, they now want us to go play? I have no resentment about anything. I am simply clear about things.”
Chapman is among numerous Cuban players who have left the island nation to seek their fortune playing in Major League Baseball or elsewhere since the start of the trade embargo with the United States. Over the years, economic conditions in Cuba have driven players to seek a better life abroad, creating a drain on baseball talent that has made the national team, a point of pride for the government and people, far less competitive than it could be on the world stage. Cuba advanced to the semifinals of the 2023 World Baseball Classic but lost to their archrival, the United States, 14-2 in Miami in a game played in a hostile atmosphere that was marred by field incursions by protestors. This past year, Cuba didn’t advance out of group play at the 2024 WBSC Premier12, going 1-4 in Group B in Taiwan
But this coming WBC might be a little different. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Andy Pages, however, has already said that he would play for Cuba in 2026 if the Dodgers allow him, PelotaCubanaUSA’s Miguel Rodriguez reported. Pages made his MLB debut last year and provided some pop for the Dodgers in the National League Championship Series, hitting two homers in game five and going 4-for-17 in the series. The Dodgers went on to win the World Series in five games over the New York Yankees, though Pages didn’t play in the series.
Moncada and Ibanez could also be key players for Cuba, which is trying to load up the roster with high-level minor league players, MLB players, and players who the FCB has sent to play in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball.
While his MLB career has largely been disappointing, Moncada performed well for Cuba at the 2023 WBC, batting .435/.519/.739 with four doubles, four walks and five RBIs in six games on his way to being named the All-Tournament third baseman, and was tied for the tournament lead in hits with 10.
Ibanez went 1-for-4 in the 2023 WBC, missing most of the tournament due to a hand injury, and batted .241/.295/.357 in 99 games last season with the Detroit Tigers as a utilityman.
Cuban Elite League Begins This Weekend – The third season of the Cuban Elite League, which features the top six teams from the previous Serie Nacional, will begin on March 15, with Las Tunas, Pinar del Rio, Havana Industriales, Ciego de Avila, Granma and Santiago playing in this year’s CEL.
The league will play a 40-game regular season in March and April and best-of-seven playoff series in May. Notable is that the Lenadores de Las Tunas, who won the last Serie Nacional season, will have a break in the schedule from April 4-17, when the club will travel to Mexico City to play in the 2025 Baseball Champions League Americas. The other five teams will continue to play while Las Tunas is in Mexico, however, it is likely that Las Tunas will take reinforcements from around the league to that event.
The Baseball Champions League Americas will feature the champions of Cuba’s Serie Nacional, Mexico’s Liga Mexicana de Beisbol, Colombia’s Liga Beisbol Profesional Colombiano, Puerto Rico’s Liga Superior Doble A, the American Association, and Curacao’s professional baseball league.
The 2025-26 Cuba Serie Nacional season will begin in September and end in January, with the champion going to the 2026 Caribbean Series in Caracas, Venezuela.
