For the National Hockey League, the 4 Nations Face-Off was a huge hit. People were talking about hockey, casual fans were watching games and television ratings for the USA versus Canada games were outstanding.
The tournament – featuring NHL players on teams from the United States, Canada, Finland and Sweden – replaced the NHL All-Star weekend.
Could baseball hold a similar event around the time of the All-Star Game?
Yes, but it might be hard to pull that off. We already have the World Baseball Classic, held every three or four years since 2006. The last one was in 2023 and the next one is set for 2026.
Japan won the last WBC and has won three of the five tournaments with the United States winning once in 2017 and the Dominican Republic in 2013. If you put those three countries and add say Venezuela or Cuba in a four-team event like the NHL just had, it could be a special event for MLB.
But there is already a WBC, so perhaps they play the four-team event in off years.
The NHL used this event to replace something that was already found lacking. No such problem exits for the MLB All-Star Game.
There is already the Futures Game, for top prospects, on the Sunday before the All-Star Game, the Red Carpet event on Tuesday pregame and the Home Run Derby on All-Star Monday night. Not to mention the MLB draft at that time as well. The calendar is pretty loaded. When could you even squeeze in another event featuring four teams and several games?
While the NHL was looking for something to replace the All-Star game, baseball is not looking for that. There is tradition for the MLB game and fans look forward to it each year.
But after the wildly popular hockey 4 Nations event, other sports may be looking to duplicate that in some form or fashion moving forward.
ABS at spring games: We have seen the Automated Ball-Strike system used in the minor leagues and the last two years at Triple-A games. Now, in spring training games in many parks throughout Florida and Arizona, it will be used for exhibition contests.
The ABS system is not in place at Sarasota’s Ed Smith Stadium but will be used often when the O’s play spring road games. It will be used in facilities that host Florida State League games during the minor league regular season.
It’s a computerized system some have called “robot umpires,” where the actual umpire can access the computer for balls and strikes calls.
Each team will have two challenges and if they win them, they retain them. A batter, pitcher or catcher can challenge the call. The pitch will then be shown using the strikezone box on the stadium scoreboard to see if the call was correct.
We should all get used to how this works this spring because there seems to be a great chance this system will be coming to MLB games in 2026. I like the ABS system. Like the current replay review system, it can correct calls that were missed. Now if a batter gets rung up on a 3-2 pitch in the eighth inning of a tie game with the bases loaded and he thinks the pitch was a ball, he can challenge it. And still be batting.
Each year it seems calling balls and strikes is a problem with various umpires and some of the current players know the strikezone as well as any umpire. This led us to the ABS system. Now that we are seeing it in spring games, using it in regular-season games is sure to follow.
Like next year.
Classy goodbye: Left-hander John Means, an Oriole from 2018 through 2024, who recently signed with Cleveland, took to social media to say goodbye to Baltimore and O’s fans.
Like most everything else about Means, it was done with pure class.
He wrote in part: “It is hard for me to put into words what the organization has meant to me and my family after a decade. When I was drafted I knew nothing about the city of Baltimore and now it is the backdrop to some of my life’s biggest joys. There are so many memories there that will be with my forever. I am so grateful for the opportunity this team gave me to play a game for a living and to live out my childhood dream.”
Means note ended as he said, “even in the hardest times, this organization lifted me up. Thank you for everything.”
Means, a pitcher who never made a Baseball America top 30 prospects list and who was an 11th-round pick, went on to become an Opening Day starter, an All-Star and pitch a no-hitter.