{"id":2271311,"date":"2026-02-07T13:07:49","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T13:07:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2271311"},"modified":"2026-02-07T13:07:49","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T13:07:49","slug":"team-usa-adds-royals-pitcher-michael-wacha-to-2026-world-baseball-classic-roster-royals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/team-usa-adds-royals-pitcher-michael-wacha-to-2026-world-baseball-classic-roster-royals\/","title":{"rendered":"Team USA Adds Royals Pitcher Michael Wacha to 2026 World Baseball Classic Roster &#8211; Royals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"news-content-main\">\n<p>\n\t<span>Team United States of America\u2019s official roster for the 2026 World Baseball Classic is in, and Kansas City Royals starting pitcher <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wachami01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Wacha<\/a> will be a part of the team. The announcement of Wacha\u2019s addition will mean that Team USA will have both Wacha and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/w\/wittbo02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Bobby Witt Jr.<\/a> from the Royals.\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span>Wacha becomes the eighth Royal to be named to the WBC, joining Witt Jr., <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/perezsa02.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Salvador Perez<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/garcima01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Maikel Garcia<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/p\/pasquvi01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Vinnie Pasquantino<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/caglija01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Jac Caglianone<\/a>, <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lugose01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Seth Lugo<\/a>, and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/e\/estevca01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=royalskeep.com&amp;utm_campaign=2026-02-06_br\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">Carlos Est\u00e9vez<\/a>.\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span><iframe allowfullscreen=\"\" class=\"ipsEmbed_finishedLoading\" data-controller=\"core.front.core.autosizeiframe\" data-embedid=\"embed8055002684\" src=\"https:\/\/royalskeep.com\/index.php?app=core&amp;module=system&amp;controller=embed&amp;url=https:\/\/x.com\/Royals\/status\/2019568405083484668\" style=\"overflow: hidden; height: 855px;\"><\/iframe> <\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span>Wacha is entering his third season with the Royals in 2026. Last season, the right-hander started 31 games, pitching to a record of 10-13, an earned run average of 3.86, and a WHIP of 1.22. Wacha led the Royals pitchers in innings with 172 \u2154 in 2025.\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span>Signed to a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/news\/michael-wacha-royals-3-year-contract\" rel=\"external\" target=\"_blank\">three-year extension<\/a> worth $51 million in November of 2024 with a club option for 2028, Wacha has posted a 23-21 record, 3.61 ERA, and 1.20 WHIP in 60 starts in the 34-year-old\u2019s two seasons with the club.\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span>Wacha will hope to help the USA bounce back from the 2023 WBC, in which they fell to Japan in the championship game, 3-2. Wacha is a USA Baseball alumnus, as he was a member of the 2011 USA Baseball Collegiate National Team.\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span>A 13-year MLB veteran, Wacha has a career record of 111-75, an ERA of 3.89, and a WHIP of 1.27 across 309 games in his career.\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n\t<span>Team USA kicks off its tournament on Friday, March 6th, in Houston, Texas, against Brazil.\u00a0<\/span>\n<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source royalskeep.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Team United States of America\u2019s official roster for the 2026 World Baseball Classic is in, and Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Michael Wacha will be a part of the team. The announcement of Wacha\u2019s addition will mean that Team USA will have both Wacha and Bobby Witt Jr. from the Royals.\u00a0 Wacha becomes the eighth [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2271312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[43627,311237,439693,400055],"class_list":["post-2271311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-michael-wacha","tag-wbc","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Team-USA-Adds-Royals-Pitcher-Michael-Wacha-to-2026-World.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2271311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2271313,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2271311\/revisions\/2271313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2271312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2271311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2271311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2271311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}