Several notable Venezuelan baseball players will be left off the country’s roster for the 2026 World Baseball Classic, manager Omar Lopez said yesterday.
Lopez, who is managing the Senadores de San Juan in the LBPRC, Puerto Rico’s professional winter league, told Daniel Alvarez-Montes of El Extrabase in a recorded conversation on Instagram that Venezuela would not be using players who are under contract to teams in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball, as NPB requires the players’ contracts be insured.
“Organizations in Japan require insurance to guarantee each player’s contract, which is very expensive. They don’t require that insurance when they play in the Liga Venezolana de Beisbol Profesional, because they claim that recovery times are longer if a player gets injured,” Lopez said in Spanish in the conversation. “But in the World Baseball Classic, the timeframes are very short compared to the start of the season.”
The LVBP’s season ends around when Nippon Professional Baseball’s spring training begins in mid-January, and NPB teams will be deep into the preseason when the World Baseball Classic begins on March 4 in Tokyo. Lopez said it remains an open question whether Venezuelans playing in South Korea’s KBO league would be similarly affected.
Among the notable players who won’t be able to play for Venezuela because of this decision are first baseman José Osuna, who has played the last five seasons for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows, where he’s been a steady power bat, hitting 87 homers and driving in 344 runs in 674 games from 2021-25.
Pitching-wise, starter Anderson Espinoza of the Orix Buffaloes, who has a 2.80 ERA in two seasons as a starter in NPB, is among the arms Venezuela will have to go without, as well as Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks lefty Darwinzon Hernández, who has 116 strikeouts and a 2.93 ERA in 89 innings over three seasons, and his teammate, righty Andres Machado, who has a 2.15 ERA over 108 2/3 innings in two seasons.
While most of the players affected by the decision are hardly household names, leaving out players in NPB will likely affect Venezuela’s pitching depth at the 2026 WBC, though it’s too early to determine how much. Teams participating in the 2026 WBC must whittle down their 50-man rosters to 35 players on Dec. 3.
Venezuela had only one NPB player on the roster at the 2023 World Baseball Classic, pitcher Edwin Escobar who was with the Yokohama DeNA BayStars at the time.
Photo: Boston Red Sox relief pitcher Darwinzon Hernandez delivers to a Kansas City Royals batter during the eighth inning of a baseball game in Kansas City, Mo., Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. (AP Photo/Colin E. Braley)
