World Baseball Classic Preview w/Stephen Nesbitt
Rates & Barrels: A show about Baseball
The Athletic
4.7 • 873 Ratings
🗓️ 3 March 2026
⏱️ 79 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
DVR is joined by Stephen Nesbitt to preview the 2026 World Baseball Classic. After the ideal Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout matchup to end the 2023 Championship Game, will this year's tournament draw even more eyes? DVR and Stephen assess each of the four pools and make a few predictions for the eight teams that will advance to the knockout stage, and their picks to win the title.
Rundown
1:09 The Dream Scenario in 2023: USA vs. Japan, Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout
15:22 Pool A (Puerto Rico, Cuba, Canada, Panama & Colombia) -- Expectations & Predictions
29:02 Pool B (USA, Mexico, Italy, Great Britain & Brazil) -- Expectations & Predictions
46:44 Pool C (Japan, Australia, South Korea, Czechia & Chinese Taipei) -- Expectations & Predictions
56:00 Pool D (Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Netherlands, Israel & Nicaragua) -- Expectations & Predictions
1:09:36 Overall Predictions: Championship Game Matchup & Winner
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Follow Stephen on Bluesky: @stephenjnesbitt.bsky.social
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Host: Derek VanRiper
With: Stephen Nesbitt
Editor: Jason Potere
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the Rates and Beryl's World Baseball Classic preview. |
| 0:17.0 | Derek Van Riper here with Stephen Nesbitt. |
| 0:19.6 | Stephen is our resident expert. Greatest |
| 0:22.9 | enthusiast in the Rates and Barrels universe for the World Baseball Classic. Stephen, thank you so |
| 0:28.4 | much for joining us. Thank you for having me. I don't know if I deserve that moniker, but I'll take it. |
| 0:32.7 | I have probably followed international baseball more than, more than most around here. I grew up in |
| 0:38.2 | France or I lived there for the first seven years of my life and the son of a real baseball |
| 0:44.9 | aficionado who did a lot of work to spread the gospel of baseball in France, which is not a place |
| 0:50.2 | that it's terribly interested in, or was terribly interested in baseball, didn't make |
| 0:54.1 | this tournament either. But I was a kid watching the bright orange of Team Netherlands back |
| 1:00.9 | in the 90s and Italy and all that. So certainly have an interest in seeing the game spread |
| 1:08.8 | globally and this tournament has done a lot to do that. Yeah, I think this |
| 1:12.5 | tournament has had its biggest moment for casual fans now. It's happened finally. It took a while. |
| 1:20.9 | There were good moments along the way, but 2023, we had the dream scenario, right? We had a U.S. versus Japan final. |
| 1:30.3 | And in a one-run game with two gone in the ninth inning, the dream matchup. |
| 1:35.3 | We had Shohei Otani on the mound with a 3-2 lead in the ninth inning against Mike Trout. |
| 1:42.0 | I mean, if you were writing a baseball movie in 2023, that is the scenario you would have put on paper that you would have hoped for. |
| 1:50.6 | And it's an amazing sequence. I was watching it again before we started recording. |
| 1:55.6 | Otani was just throwing heat. |
| 1:58.0 | Swing and a miss. |
| 1:59.6 | A fastball at 100. |
| 2:01.6 | He was throwing 100-mile-an-hour cutters, basically. |
... |
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