Woo Joo Jeong Is Skating the River

A key a part of growing as a baseball analyst is realizing one’s personal scouting blind spots. So right here’s one among mine: I’ll go completely berserk for any prospect who reveals even a touch of life in opposition to older competitors in worldwide play. I can’t assist myself.

Brett Lawrie makes the Canadian Olympic group simply out of highschool in 2008, and performs often within the event. (This event featured lights-out pitching by 21-year-old Hyun Jin Ryu and 20-year-old Stephen Strasburg, the latter the one school participant on Staff USA.) Lawrie then performs for Canada once more within the 2009 WBC, earlier than making his skilled debut.

Additionally on Staff Canada in 2009: 20-year-old Single-A right-hander Phillippe Aumont comes right into a jam with the bases loaded and no one out in opposition to Staff USA, and blows up David Wright, Kevin Youkilis, and Curtis Granderson in succession.

In 2017, Jorge Alfaro, 23 years outdated and with all of six video games of main league expertise, hits a tape measure dwelling run off Fernando Rodney of the Dominican Republic to drive further innings.

(My distaste for the zombie runner rule has its origins on this contest, which ended 10-3 after Alfaro’s overmatched Colombia squad ran out of pitchers.)

You may or may not keep in mind what occurred to those guys. Lawrie had a monster third of a rookie 12 months at age 21, and whereas he was principally fairly respectable in six in any other case musclebound large league seasons, he was out of baseball by 27. Aumont and his diabolical knuckle-cure made the large leagues; the truth is, I used to be excited to be within the park for his main league debut, however his profession didn’t final lengthy for causes greatest illustrated by his 7.0 profession BB/9 ratio.

And whereas Alfaro has carved out a strong profession — I used to be going to proverbial bat for him as not too long ago as January 2023 — I anticipated extra from this unusually gifted athlete than the lifetime of a well-coiffed backup catcher.

Why do I maintain making this error? Why will I maintain making it?

Two causes: First, I like worldwide sports activities. World Baseball Basic, Olympics, World Cup, world junior hockey event, Six Nations rugby… you place a flag on it and I’ll watch it. I feel golf is an ethical abomination, and once I’m President we’ll return each nation membership within the union to pristine wilderness. Even so, I’ll exit of my method to watch the Ryder Cup.

Second, I’ve a well-founded perception within the utility of testing younger athletes in opposition to older competitors. Generally you get that in school, or within the minors, however the uneven nature of worldwide competitors affords an uncommon density of such confrontations.

Worldwide baseball is pretty mature; it grew to become a medal sport on the Olympics in 1992, and the World Baseball Basic has been round for 20 years now as one thing approaching the best-on-best tournaments that outline worldwide soccer, basketball, hockey, and rugby.

Is it fully mature, in that there’s an unlimited number of completely different winners, and a reasonably stage enjoying subject amongst rivals? Not likely, however I don’t know that that’s true of any worldwide sport aside from males’s soccer.

In 5 WBCs, we’ve had three completely different winners and a complete of 9 completely different international locations within the semifinal spherical. When the Dominican Republic didn’t get out of the group stage in 2023, it was an enormous deal within the native press, maybe akin to the soul-searching that will accompany an early exit by Brazil within the FIFA World Cup.

Nonetheless, there are vast variations in high quality among the many 20 WBC groups. Even inside these groups. Do you wish to understand how lots of the 20 rosters are made up fully of MLB gamers?

Zero.

That’s slightly deceptive; the very best Japanese and Korean gamers don’t all the time come over right here, and the distinction between a significant leaguer and a minor leaguer is fleeting. At this time’s New York Yankee is tomorrow’s Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRider.

So how about this: What share of every group’s roster includes of gamers at the moment beneath contract with a group in MLB, NPB, the KBO, or its minor league associates? Solely two international locations, South Korea and Japan, are at the moment batting 1.000 on that depend.

Be happy to nitpick that criterion; there are completely groups within the CPBL, or the Mexican League, or American indy ball, that face a better stage of competitors than some A-ball or rookie league groups within the affiliated minors. I don’t know what the league adjustment is for a participant on Neptunus, the large powerhouse group within the Honkbal Hoofdklasse, vs. Bethune-Cookman, which received a participant onto the Dutch roster.

And there are edge circumstances; the one non-MLB participant on Staff USA is Clayton Kershaw, who’s certain for retirement but in addition pitched within the World Collection 4 months in the past. He is perhaps a glorified mascot on this squad, however even the outdated junkballer model of Kershaw is best than most international locations’ aces.

The purpose I’m attempting to make is that for lots of nations, the WBC is form of a Thriller, Alaska state of affairs. You already know, the film about an Alaskan pond hockey group that takes on the New York Rangers. (For my cash, Burt Reynolds’ greatest sports activities movie however solely the second-best film of the Nineties with Ron Eldard and Mary McCormack in distinguished supporting roles. I acknowledge that is is perhaps a minority opinion; Deep Influence was polarizing.)

On the finish of the film, the Rangers beat the Thriller group, but it surely’s shut, and two of the hometown gamers get signed to skilled contracts. One is a ready-made NHL-quality participant who’s been caught working at a grocery retailer; the opposite is an unpolished however swift-footed teenager named Stevie Weeks, whose callowness is illustrated in a memorable scene involving a snowplow.

Underdog WBC groups have an identical composition: a couple of legit professionals, backed up by a bunch of men with actual jobs. Even Canada — a fairly big baseball nation — needed to name on Aumont once more. An up-and-down man at his peak, Aumont is now 37, and has been farming greens in Gatineau since 2020. If he delivers a shutdown inning in opposition to Staff USA this time round, it’ll be a a lot greater story than it was in 2009.

What I’m concerned with are the potential Stevie Weekses. Right here’s one other instance from 2023: Harry Ford had simply turned 20 and had zero expertise above Low-A. However as a result of he performed on a Nice Britain group that was mild on recognizable names, even a back-end-of-the-Prime 100 prospect, some two and a half years from his main league debut, began often, hit in the midst of the lineup, and have become a breakout star.

Is Konnor Griffin adequate to do this proper now? Completely. However in the end, the ceiling for him is an MVP-type shortstop. And Staff USA has two of these in Bobby Witt Jr. and Gunnar Henderson, and has left Trea Turner, Dansby Swanson, Mookie Betts, and CJ Abrams dwelling. I might go on, however you get the purpose. Griffin is to this point down the pecking order he’d have to discover a Czech passport beneath his pillow with a view to even take into consideration the WBC now. The identical goes for Moisés Ballesteros and Venezuela, or Leo De Vries and the Dominican Republic.

Even some prospects from lesser baseball powers have been left dwelling. (Panama apparently has an excessive amount of catching depth to take Eduardo Tait, to my disappointment.) That leaves our pool of potential Stevie Weekses moderately shallow. At the beginning of the event this week, there’ll solely be 4 youngsters out of some 600 rostered gamers, and solely 16 gamers beneath the age of 21.

This can be a enjoyable desk, as a result of in studying concerning the youngest gamers within the WBC, I’ve been capable of uncover what fashionable 2000s child names had been like in Dutch. There are Braydens and Bellas in each language.

Most of those guys are both going to be end-of-bench choices, like Lawrie on Staff Canada, or they’re going to finish up framing their WBC jersey of their workplace as a enjoyable dialog piece whereas they’re promoting insurance coverage or training probate regulation. Certainly, Aumont shouldn’t be the one participant who’ll depart this event and return to rotating his turnips.

I’ll spotlight two exceptions from this listing: One is Wei-En Lin, who’s gotten a whole lot of protection right here not too long ago. David Laurila wrote about him twice in late 2025, as soon as in a Sunday Notes column titled, “Wei-En Lin and Jo Hsi Hsu Will Be Taiwan’s WBC Pitchers to Watch.” And certain sufficient, it got here to be. Lin additionally made Eric Longenhagen, Brendan Gawlowski, and James Fegan’s watchlist for the 2027 Prime 100 Prospects listing, as a promising lefty with good fastball command who’s a breaking ball away from future mid-rotation standing.

The opposite pitcher from this listing I’ve an eye fixed on is Woo Joo Jeong of South Korea. Jeong simply turned 19 in November. In 2025, at simply 18 years outdated, he made 51 appearances for Hanwha of the KBO, principally out of the bullpen on a group that included Ryu and Cody Ponce. Jeong posted a 2.85 ERA and struck out 82 batters in 53 2/3 innings.

I’m attempting to not get too over my skis right here, having realized my lesson within the Phillippe Aumont Incident of 2009, however Jeong is 4 months youthful than Seth Hernandez, the primary highschool pitcher chosen in final 12 months’s draft. And whereas Hernandez was enjoying, you already know, highschool ball, Jeong was ending second within the KBO in strikeout fee, amongst pitchers with 50 or extra innings.

Jeong is my early choose, but it surely’s too early to inform for certain who would be the Stevie Weeks of this event. Final time round, a Czech electrician struck out Shohei Ohtani throughout pool play; absolutely one thing like that can occur once more and I’ll get googly-eyed over a participant we’ll by no means hear from once more. The magic of worldwide sports activities is predicated largely within the emergence of unlikely heroes, be they part-timers or, in some circumstances, precise youngsters.