\nMaikel Garcia made sure to keep it in the family.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He’s almost better-known as the cousin of the great Atlanta Braves outfielder, but in leading Venezuela to its first World Baseball Classic championship, Garcia forged his own road to stardom.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Garcia led the WBC with 10 hits in seven games and they came in almost every form: A home run, a bunt single and a pair of doubles as he drove in seven runs and stole three bases \u2013 absolute kerosene in Venezuela\u2019s No. 2 hole between Acu\u00f1a and three-time batting champion Luis Arr\u00e1ez.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a key coming-out party for Garcia, the Kansas City Royals third baseman who secured his long-term future by signing a five-year, $57.5 million contract extension with the Royals a year ago. He responded with a season worthy of some down-ballot MVP consideration, amassing 5.8 WAR while hitting 16 homers with an .800 OPS.<\/p>\n\nStill, higher-profile teammates were scattered all over this World Baseball Classic, with Bobby Witt Jr. making highlight-reel plays for Team USA and Vinnie Pasquantino and Jac Caglianone hitting tape-measure homers and doling out espressos and pecks on the cheek for Italy.<\/p>\n
Yet as they return to their spring training site in Surprise, Arizona, and Acu\u00f1a to his Atlanta Braves teammates up the road in Florida, it is Garcia who will have a gold medal in his luggage \u2013 and some MVP hardware, as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n2026 All-World Baseball Classic team<\/h2>\n\n- Catcher<\/strong>: Austin Wells, Dominican Republic<\/li>\n
- 1B<\/strong>: Luis Arraez, Venezuela<\/li>\n
- 2B<\/strong>: Brice Turang, USA<\/li>\n
- 3B<\/strong>: Maikel Garcia, Venezuela<\/li>\n
- OF<\/strong>: Roman Anthony, USA<\/li>\n
- OF<\/strong>: Fernando Tatis Jr., Dominican Republican<\/li>\n
- OF<\/strong>: Dante Nori, Italy<\/li>\n
- DH<\/strong>: Shohei Ohtani, Japan<\/li>\n
- Pitcher<\/strong>: Paul Skenes, USA<\/li>\n
- Pitcher<\/strong>: Logan Webb, USA<\/li>\n
- Pitcher<\/strong>: Aaron Nola, Italy<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.usatoday.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even the avid baseball fan would have acknowledged that were Venezuela to win the World Baseball Classic, Ronald Acu\u00f1a Jr. would likely be the MVP.\u00a0 Maikel Garcia made sure to keep it in the family.\u00a0 He’s almost better-known as the cousin of the great Atlanta Braves outfielder, but in leading Venezuela to its first World […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2334538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[452290,21849,351169,91466,305282,305318,354075,24379,378940,39514,372725,437872,423081,423762,354074,313842,21738,351155,239343,239347,307675,376234,23759,351154,350141,452292,21848,42570,358621,452291,351170,28927,400055],"class_list":["post-2334537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-arraez","tag-baseball","tag-bobby","tag-bobby-witt-jr","tag-classic","tag-competitions","tag-garcia","tag-international","tag-international-sports-competitions","tag-jr","tag-logan","tag-logan-webb","tag-luis","tag-luis-arraez","tag-maikel","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-news","tag-ohtani","tag-overall","tag-overall-positive","tag-paul","tag-paul-skenes","tag-positive","tag-shohei","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-skenes","tag-sports","tag-sports-news","tag-venezuela","tag-webb","tag-witt","tag-world","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Who-won-WBC-MVP-2026-Maikel-Garcia-honored-for-Venezuela.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334537","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=2334537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2334539,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334537\/revisions\/2334539"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2334538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}