Right, let's get through this.
Friday was the first full day of the 2026 World Baseball Classic and it was — depending on your team — either reassuring, chaotic, or a bit of both. Eight games across four time zones. Here are the ones that matter to you.
Yusei Kikuchi's teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto started and was promptly upstaged in the second inning by Shohei Ohtani, who hit a grand slam during what became a 10-run second inning. Japan invoked the mercy rule. It was not a competitive baseball game. It was a reminder that Japan still has the best player on the planet on their roster, and that Yamamoto — the 2025 World Series MVP — is the second-best pitcher in this tournament behind Paul Skenes.
Kikuchi did not pitch in this one. He starts tomorrow against South Korea in what is one of the more compelling individual matchups of the entire first round. Japan vs Korea at the Tokyo Dome, 5am ET on FS1. Set the alarm or don't — but it's worth staying up for if you can manage it.
Yoán Moncada is the only MLB player on Cuba's entire roster and they still won. Whether he contributed meaningfully to that victory I cannot tell you with precision, but the oblique that's kept him limited all spring appears to be holding together under actual competitive conditions. That is genuinely useful information for your concerns about the Angels' third base situation.
Samy Natera Jr., 20 years old, faced live WBC-level competition for essentially the first time. Mexico won comfortably. Great Britain were outmatched, which is not a criticism of Great Britain so much as an observation that they were playing Mexico.
Matthew Lugo and Gustavo Campero were both in this game on opposite sides, and Puerto Rico won without much drama. Worth noting: Nolan Arenado played third base for Puerto Rico. He was available in January. The Angels let him go to Arizona. He is now playing competitive baseball in a sold-out San Juan stadium against two of your players. Fine.
This is the one you probably watched, and if you did, you spent most of the evening mildly confused about how this kept feeling closer than the scoreline suggested.
Logan Webb started for the USA and was excellent. He gave up a leadoff homer to Lucas Ramirez — son of Manny Ramirez, 20 years old, which is mortifying for everyone on the receiving end — and then retired twelve batters in a row. Aaron Judge hit a two-run homer in the first inning, which was about as on-brand as things get.
The Americans then proceeded to go 5-for-21 with runners in scoring position and left 13 men on base, making a nine-run lead feel briefly precarious when Ramirez's second homer of the night pulled it to 8-5 in the eighth. His second homer. At 20. Against one of the better pitching staffs assembled in WBC history. Manny Ramirez was in the stands.
In the ninth inning the USA scored seven runs off five walks, a balk, and what felt like the baseball gods getting tired of the drama and just ending it. 15-5 final. Brice Turang had three hits and four RBIs and was the game's best offensive performer, which is the sort of thing that will absolutely not happen again this tournament.
The actual story is the pitching rotation. Skubal faces Great Britain Saturday. Skenes faces Mexico Sunday. If Kikuchi is healthy and pitching well tomorrow morning — which you'll find out at 5am — the Japan vs USA storyline gets very interesting very quickly.