{"id":2339498,"date":"2026-03-21T01:50:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-21T01:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2339498"},"modified":"2026-03-21T01:50:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T01:50:11","slug":"how-royals-players-impressed-j-j-picollo-at-the-wbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/how-royals-players-impressed-j-j-picollo-at-the-wbc\/","title":{"rendered":"How Royals players impressed J.J. Picollo at the WBC"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Like Royals fans, general manager J.J. Picollo rather enjoyed watching the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n

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In addition to many tight, exciting games, the Royals players representing their country were standouts. Third baseman Maikel Garcia was the WBC MVP, and he and teammate Salvador Perez sent items<\/a> to the National Baseball Hall of Fame after helping Venezuela win the title.<\/p>\n

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Right fielder Jac Caglianone had four hits, four RBIs, five walks and four strikeouts for Team Italy and first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino had a three-homer game. Shortstop Bobby Witt Jr.\u2019s defensive wizardry for Team USA wowed fans, too.<\/p>\n

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\u201cExactly what we witnessed was what you hope they get out of it,\u201d Picollo said. \u201cHigh-intensity games helps development. You kind of get to see how your players play in the big moments, and our guys did great. So we feel like it really turned out well, and the guys really enjoyed it. They were all back (Wednesday). They were cutting up with each other in the locker room talking about it. So there was an excitement around our facility with what our guys were doing. So it turned out to be really a good thing for us.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThere was a lot of discussion nationally about the Royals and the players we have and just to see them and what they did on the big stage, I thought was really, really cool. And they all had their moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Pitcher Luinder Avila didn\u2019t allow a run in 4 1\/3 innings over two games for Venezuela. Fellow Royals Michael Wacha (Team USA) and Seth Lugo (Puerto Rico) also pitched in the tournament. And KC closer Carlos Est\u00e9vez threw a scoreless inning for the Dominican Republic.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s more: Royals minor-leaguer Oscar Rayo didn\u2019t allow a run in two outings for Nicaragua, catcher Omar Hern\u00e1ndez batted .083 for Cuba and Eric Cerantola pitched two scoreless outings for Canada.<\/p>\n

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Another Canadian also impressed Picollo.<\/p>\n

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\u201cOne of the, I\u2019ll say, lesser-known guys to our fans,\u201d Picollo said, \u201cbut Abraham Toro, when you look up the final stats, it was Maikel No. 1 and everything, and Toro was a close second. He quietly had an excellent tournament for Canada. Our fans just don\u2019t know him, and he\u2019ll be in Triple-A for us. So it was great. It was on an international stage.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Toro, an infielder who signed a minor-league deal<\/a> with the Royals shortly before Christmas, tied for the second-most hits (eight) in the tournament. Only Garcia had more, with 10. Toro also tied for third with three triples and was one of just six players to hit a triple during the WBC. He finished with five RBIs in five games.<\/p>\n

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The Yankees\u2019 Aaron Judge also had five RBIs.<\/p>\n

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All of this made for some good tournament-viewing for Picollo.<\/p>\n

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\u201cVinnie is a celebrity in Italy right now, everybody in Venezuela knew about Salvy, but now they all know about Maikel, so it was really cool,\u201d Picollo said. \u201cAnd then when you throw in just the political environment with Venezuela right now, it clearly meant a lot to those players and that country to win that tournament. So that was a really cool thing to see.\u201c<\/p>\n

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This story was originally published March 20, 2026 at 11:33 AM.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Related Stories from Kansas City Star<\/h5>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Pete Grathoff<\/a><\/p>\n

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The Kansas City Star<\/span><\/p>\n

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From covering the World Series to the World Cup, Pete Grathoff has done a little bit of everything since joining The Kansas City Star in 1997. <\/span>\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\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.kansascity.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Royals fans, general manager J.J. Picollo rather enjoyed watching the World Baseball Classic. In addition to many tight, exciting games, the Royals players representing their country were standouts. Third baseman Maikel Garcia was the WBC MVP, and he and teammate Salvador Perez sent items to the National Baseball Hall of Fame after helping Venezuela […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2059080,"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":[425865,43627,313842,77699,400055],"class_list":["post-2339498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty","tag-abraham-toro","tag-kansas-city-royals","tag-maikel-garcia","tag-salvador-perez","tag-world-baseball-classic"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Former-Royals-outfielder-announces-retirement-at-age-of-34.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339498","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=2339498"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2339499,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2339498\/revisions\/2339499"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2059080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2339498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2339498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2339498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}