The World Baseball Classic is a cool event and the last iteration provided some classic moments and memories, but it comes with numerous issues for major league franchises. Not only does it interrupt the middle of spring training, but players have to ramp up their training intensity much earlier than normal. This can have effects all season long, particularly for pitchers, but there’s also the more acute concern of getting hurt in the WBC at play. So, players under guaranteed contracts need their contracts insured to mitigate the possibility of injury hurting their major league team.
That insurance is hard to come by for some, particularly older players with long injury histories.