70 JULY 2019 • BASEBALLAMERICA.COMDepartments
INTERNATIONALOLYMPIC DREAMS
USA Baseball casts a wide net as it eyes minor leaguers
for the 2020 Olympic qualifiers this fallby KYLE GLASERT
he 2020 Olympics are just over a year away. The first round of
qualifying is less than six months away.
With games rapidly approaching, USA Baseball has begun the
process of identifying and selecting players it wants for the U.S.
national team, even though an official announcement has yet to be made
about which players will be eligible to participate.
“We believe it will be non-40-man roster players,” said Paul Seiler, the
executive director and CEO of USA Baseball. “The specific date to deter-
mine that has not been communicated to us, but it’ll most likely be non-
40-man roster players.”
The 2020 Olympics in Tokyo mark the return of baseball to the Summer
Games for the first time since 2008. The International Olympic Committee
voted to cut baseball and softball from the 2012 London Olympics and the
2016 Rio De Janeiro Games, but both are back for 2020.
As such, USA Baseball is dusting off the playbook from last decade to
choose the 28 players it believes will give the United States the best chance
to qualify for the Olympics, and ultimately compete for a gold medal.
The process began in April. USA Baseball compiled a list of more 100
non-40-man roster players at the start of the minor league season and
has tracked them closely through the first half of the year. A team of 12-15
professional scouts, with the blessings of their major league clubs, has
provided USA Baseball with reports and evaluations on those players, as
well as recommendations on who should be chosen.
“The quote-unquote tryout is the minor league season up to the point
where we have to make final decisions,” Seiler said. “As (they) play, play-
ers are going to play themselves into the conversation and other players
will play themselves out of the conversation.”
Shortly after the major league all-star break in July, USA Baseball will
formally rank the players based on its own evaluations and scouts’ rec-
ommendations. In August it will begin contacting teams for permission
to take those players for Team USA, requests clubs can either approve or
deny.
The official 28-man roster will be announced in late September or early
October.
“If we picked a team today on paper, the team that ultimately will be
eligible based on guys getting called up (to the majors) and different vari-
ables that will either add or remove a player to the list, it will be very dif-
ferent by the time that team gets together in October,” Seiler said. “So it is
a bit of a moving target, but we are blessed—and we know this—to have a
very deep pool of athletes to choose from.”
The last U.S. Olympic baseball roster in 2008 was a mix of prospects and
veterans not on 40-man rosters. Jake Arrieta, Dexter Fowler, Trevor Cahill,
Brett Anderson, Colby Rasmus and Matt LaPorta were all on the team as
prospects in the minors at the time. Stephen Strasburg memorably made
the team as a rising San Diego State sophomore. The young group mixed
with minor league veterans who had previous major league experience,
such as Mike Hessman, Blaine Neal, Mike Koplove, Terry Tiffee and John
Gall.Stephen Strasburg memorably
pitched for Team USA as a rising
San Diego State sophomore at the
2008 Beijing Olympics. The U.S. won
bronze, but the next year Strasburg
struck gold when he was drafted No.
1 overall by the Nationals.KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGESSeiler said he envisions the 2020 roster hav-
ing a similar makeup.
“It’s best player in the moment, and that
could be a lot of different guys,” he said. “This
is typically not a quote-unquote all-prospect
team. It’s a combination of best available play-
ers... Obviously the minor league player is
where the bulk of our team will come from, but
if there is a player like a former pro pitching in
Japan, that might be somebody who is attractive
based on their familiarity of the landscape and
where we might be going.”
Once finalized, Team USA will converge for
a training camp in Phoenix in late October. Its
first game is Nov. 2 in Guadalajara, Mexico, in
the first round of the Premier12 Tournament.
Team USA will have three opportunities to
qualify for the six-team Olympic field.
The first chance is at Premier12, a 12-nation
tournament of teams from all over the globe in
November. The tournament’s top finisher fromthe Americas—the field includes the U.S.,Cuba,
Mexico, Venezuela, Canada, Puerto Rico and the
Dominican Republic—will earn an automatic
bid.
If the U.S fails to qualify at the Premier12,
it will have another chance at an Americas
Qualifier in Arizona in March 2020. That
eight-nation qualifier will be made up of the six
teams from the Americas who didn’t qualify at
Premier12 plus the top two finishers from the
2019 Pan America Games.
If the U.S. again failed to qualify, it would
have a third chance at a six-nation tournament
in Taiwan made up of the runners-up from the
previous qualifiers. The winner of that tourna-
ment will earn the final Olympic berth.
There’s no guarantee that the U.S. will even
make the cut. Seven of the top 12 teams in the
world as ranked by the World Baseball-Softball
Confederation hail from the Americas, with only
two Olympic bids from the region guaranteed.