World Baseball Classic: Group-by-group preview

Yahoo Sports AM is our daily newsletter, keeping you up to date on all things sports. Register here Get it every weekday morning.

🚨 Headlines

🏀 30-0： Miami (Ohio) preserved its perfect season with a 74-72 victory over Toledo, becoming the 15th team in men’s D1 history and the fourth this century to start 30-0. The Redhawks also won the regular season MAC championship for the first time in 21 years.

advertise

⚾️ United States 15, San Francisco 1: The Americans defeated the Giants in the first game before the World Baseball Classic, one of 15 games between MLB and WBC teams on Tuesday. They play one more game today (against the Rockies) before traveling to Houston for Friday’s opener against Brazil.

🏈 Who wants Keller? The Cardinals will waive Kyler Murray, ending the former No. 1 overall pick’s tenure in Arizona after seven seasons with just one playoff appearance. The talented but inconsistent quarterback is still owed $36.8 million and will start over somewhere this fall.

⚾️ PED PAUSE: Braves member Jurickson Profal was suspended for 162 games after testing positive for PEDs for the second time last year; Phillies CF Johan Rohas faces an 80-game PED suspension, which he is appealing.

💵 The owner’s box: Chinese billionaire Lin Bin is buying a 1% stake in the Dolphins’ parent company at a staggering $12.5 billion valuation, according to Sportico, which also reports that Broncos owner Rob Walton will quietly acquire a 10% stake in the Diamondbacks in 2024 at a $2 billion valuation.

advertise

⚾️The World Baseball Classic is coming

The sixth annual World Baseball Classic kicks off today, with the 20 teams vying for the final spot when the final game is played in Miami later this month. Let’s break this area down group by group.

Group A: Canada, Colombia, Cuba, Panama and Puerto Rico will play a round-robin series at Hiram Bithorn Stadium in baseball-mad San Juan, although the host nation — yes, Puerto Rico competes internationally under its own flag — will be without two of its best players as Francisco Lindor and Carlos Correa are uninsured due to recent injuries.

advertise

Canada’s best chance? Canada is by far the most accomplished baseball nation to have never made it to the WBC playoffs, and given that their group is relatively weak and they have arguably the best hitter (Mariners 1B Josh Naylor) and starting pitcher (Cubs righty Jameson Taillon) in Group A, there’s a prime opportunity to end that drought.

Pool B: Tournament favorite Team USA (-110 at BetMGM) will play at Houston’s Daikin Park along with Mexico, Italy, Great Britain and Brazil. There’s plenty of star power here in the likes of Aaron Nola and Vinnie Pasquantino (Italy), Randy Arozarena and Alejandro Kirk (Mexico), Jazz Chisholm Jr. (UK)… and some decent players in red, white and blue.

American Muscle: Seriously, this list is ridiculous. These include defending Cy Youngs (Paul Skenes) and Tarik Skubal (Tarik Skubal), three-time MVP Aaron Judge (Aaron Judge), two-time MVP Bryce Harper (Bryce Harper), defending American League and National League HR champions Cal Raleigh (Cal Raleigh) and Kyle Schwarber (Kyle Schwarber), young superstar Bobby Witt Jr. and Gunnar Henderson and 14 other All-Stars We don’t even have space to mention it here.

Pool C: The three-time defending WBC champions Samurai Japan will host South Korea, Australia, Chinese Taipei and the Czech Republic at the Tokyo Dome. Expect the Czechs to once again be tournament darlings like they were in 2023, thanks to a roster full of regular guys who go about their day jobs without knocking off some of the most talented players in history.

advertise

Who (else) to watch: All eyes will be on Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but you’d better not overlook Australia’s Travis Bazzana (the Guardians’ No. 1 pick in 2024), South Korea’s Do-Yong Kim (2024 KBO MVP) or Chinese Taipei’s plethora of young talent, which currently features six of the tournament’s best players Organize a list of top 30 prospects.

D pool: The team, which plays at LoanDepot Park in Miami, is the strongest of the four franchises, boasting a wealth of MLB talent from the Dominican Republic, Venezuela and the Netherlands (primarily through the Dutch Caribbean island of Curacao). Israel and Nicaragua are at a disadvantage here, although it’s a little odd that both countries are led by former MLB managers Brad Ausmus (Israel) and Dusty Baker (Nicaragua).

Star lineup: DR’s lineup is almost as good as Team USA’s, including Juan Soto, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado, Julio Rodriguez, Cotel Marte and Junior Caminero. Venezuela has Ronald Acuña Jr., Jackson Jorio, Eugenio Suarez, Luis Arras and the Contreras brothers, while the Netherlands has Xander Bogaerts and Ozzie Albies.

advertise

⚽️Can the World Cup escape the world around it?

FIFA president Gianni Infantino likes to say “football unites the world” – an aspiration that has become a campaign slogan for the sport’s global authority. With 100 days to go before the North American World Cup kicks off, Infantino and FIFA have a daunting task.

via Steven Goff of Yahoo Sports:

While FIFA and its partners celebrated the countdown to the biggest World Cup in history, with a record 48 teams playing a record 104 games across three countries, concerns beyond the stadium itself threatened to overshadow the first men’s World Cup on Earth since 1994.

advertise

Iran is considering whether to participate after the United States and Israel bombed their country. The cartel violence has rattled Mexico, which plans to host 13 games during the five-week World Cup, which it co-hosts with the United States and Canada.

Municipalities from metropolitan Los Angeles to quaint Foxborough, Massachusetts, are pleading with the federal government for funding specifically to provide security and logistics for tens of thousands of visitors.

Fans have valid complaints about ticket prices, and cash-strapped cities are scaling back fan festivals. Is the world united? Hardly.

Read on.

🏀 The madness before the madness

March Madness is heralded as the crown jewel of the college basketball season, but some believe the two-week sprint to the conference championship that begins Monday is just as exciting. 31 leagues. Team 361. Everyone is chasing the coveted automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.

advertise

Menswear preview: Conference tournament guide this week

What are the main differences between Men’s Championship Week and Women’s Championship Week? The women’s power conference gets underway first, with the SEC, Big 10, Big 12 and ACC tournaments all kicking off today. One similarity? Both contain some very unstable formats, like the Sunbelt and WCC’s laddered brackets (with lots of byes for the top seeds!), and what the Horizon League is doing.

Women’s team preview: Can anyone upset South Carolina or UCLA? Will Duke repeat?

📺 Watchlist: Wednesday, March 4

⚽️ She believes in cups

Two weeks after the U.S. swept Canada to win two Olympic hockey gold medals, the rivalry comes to soccer as the U.S. women’s soccer team takes on Canada tonight in Columbus (6:45 p.m. ET, TNT) In the Cup of SheBelieves. Argentina and Colombia played earlier in the day (3:30 p.m., truTV).

advertise

Where it stands: The United States (2-0 over Argentina) and Canada (4-1 over Colombia) both won on Sunday in Nashville, with Canada holding a slight advantage on goal difference if it went into the tiebreaker. The third and final game is Saturday in Harrison, N.J.

🏀 Unrivaled Champion

Upstart Women’s 3-on-3 Basketball League Season 2 ends tonight in Miami (9:30 p.m., TNT)the top-seeded Phantom and the second-seeded Mist will not only compete for the championship, but will also win a prize of $100,000 for each player.

Need to know names: Mist is led by league co-founder and two-time WNBA MVP Breanna Stewart, who will play alongside former WNBA scoring champion Arike Ogunbowale and three-time All-Star Allisha Gray. The Phantoms are led by two-time WNBA champion Kelsey Plumb and 2025 first-rounder Kiki Ilyafin, but will be without unparalleled DPOY Aliyah Boston, who was injured on Friday.

advertise

More to watch:

• 🏀 NBA: Thunder vs. Knicks (7 p.m., ESPN) Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has scored 20 or more points in 123 consecutive games and is just three shy of Wilt Chamberlain’s record.

• ⚾️ World Baseball Classic: Chinese Taipei vs Australia (10 p.m., FS1) …The sixth WBC contest was held at the Tokyo Dome.

• ⚽️ Premier League: Aston Villa vs Chelsea (2:30 p.m., USA);Brighton vs Arsenal (2:30 p.m., Peacock);Man City vs Nottingham Forest (2:30 p.m., Peacock);Manchester United vs Newcastle (3:15 p.m., Peacock) … Five of the top six teams are playing.

Any plans this weekend? Gametime is the best place to get last minute tickets to events in your city. Get your tickets now!

🌎 Marathon Trivia

The Tokyo Marathon on Sunday is one of the seven major marathons in the world.

question: Can you name six other majors?

hint: Three are in the United States, two in Europe and one in Australia.

The answer is at the bottom.

⛳️Photo completed

Jupiter Links Golf Club clinched the final TGL playoff spot on Tuesday night by defeating The Bay Golf Club on a hole-in-one from Tom Kim.

What’s next: Jupiter Links will join No. 1 seed Boston, No. 2 seed Los Angeles and No. 3 seed Atlanta in the semifinals later this month.

advertise

______________________________________________________________________________

Trivia Answers: Boston, Chicago, New York, Berlin, London and Sydney (promoted to major cities in 2025)

We hope you like this version Yahoo Sports AMour daily newsletter to keep you up to date on all things sports. Register here Get it delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.