In 2023, Team Australia made history by advancing to the second round of the World Baseball Classic.
In 2006, 2009, 2013 and 2017, the Aussies were eliminated in the first round, including last-place finishes in 2003 and 2013. But the fifth edition of the WBC was different. Australia managed to finish 3-1 in Pool B. They had landmark victories over Korea, China and the upstart Czech Republic. In five games, the Aussies blasted seven home runs, tied for third-best in the tournament. Their only loss in pool play came at the hands of eventual champion Japan.
Baseball in Australia is older than the Commonwealth itself, outpacing Australian Federation – the modern nation’s founding event – by half a century. The Victorian Gold Rush of the 1850s saw a mass influx of prospectors from around the world, including Americans. They brought the progenitors of the modern game with them, and it became a well-known, secondary sport in the country.
While the Australian Baseball League is undergoing a turbulent past few years, the national team is on a far better trajectory. The Aussies are 5-12 all-time in WBC play, with three of their five wins coming in the most recent edition of the classic. Luckily for fans in the land down under, much of that pace-setting squad is returning for the 2026 tournament; by my count, thirteen players.
Australian Baseball League fans know their team’s captain well. Tim Kennelly, the 39-year-old Perthie who reached as high as AAA ball for the Philadelphia Phillies, is by most accounts the best player in ABL history. His 509 career hits are over a hundred more than next-closest Robbie Perkins, the Brisbane catcher who’s suiting up for Australia as well in the 2026 WBC. Kennelly’s 63 home runs, 256 RBI and 453 games played are all atop the ABL leaderboards. In 11 games for Australia in three WBC tournaments, Kennelly has logged nine hits and a .273 average, driving in three, walking four times, and hitting a home run in 2023.
Kennelly is joined in the outfield by Aaron Whitefield, the all-time stolen-bases leader in the ABL with 97. The 29-year-old logged arguably his best ABL season in the 2024-25 campaign with the Melbourne Aces, batting .348 with a career-high five homers and a .914 OPS. He won the ABL Hitting Champion award that season, the equivalent to a Batting Title in the Majors. While the complex situation between the Aces and the ABL in the 2025-26 season is outside the purview of this preview, Whitefield is with Melbourne and thus is not in active ABL play, as of writing.
Ulrich Bojarski was a key part of the Aussie outfield in 2023, and looks likely to be again. The South African-born, Australia-raised Melbourne Ace packs a wallop, with two of his last three seasons in the ABL seeing him slug eight homers – no small feat in a league where the single-season record is only 17, and where no player has ever hit more than 100 for their career. Bojarski’s 1.031 OPS in 2022-23 is one of scant few recent ABL seasons wherein a player has gotten over the 1.000 OPS threshold.
The Australian infield is no slouch either, with perhaps the biggest name on the dirt for American audiences being Travis Bazzana. Born in Hornsby, north of Sydney, he’s most well-known for his Oregon State University career and subsequent Number One Overall selection in the 2024 MLB Draft. But before he was a Beaver, he was a Sydney Blue Sox player from 2019 to 2021 – starting at just fifteen years old. He was mainly a replacement player, only seeing 19 games of action and collecting nine hits and one RBI. It was not a sign of things to come. In Corvallis, Bazzana hit .360 over a trio of seasons, clocking 45 home runs and 251 hits.He slugged .660 with an OBP three points shy of 50%, at .497. In 2024, Bazzana suited up for Australia in the WBSC Premier12 (another international competition, below the WBC on the pecking order), where he hit .263.
College baseball fans might also recognize Robbie Glendinning, Mizzou-made draftee of the Pittsburgh Pirates back in 2017. He made it as far as Baltimore’s AAA squad before returning home to the ABL. Glendinning is a star in the ABL, winning Rookie of the Year honors in 2019 and currently sitting fifth on the all-time ABL batting average leaderboard with a .314 clip. In the 2023 WBC, Glendinning batted .300 for the Aussies with a pair of home runs, six RBI, and a .991 OPS.
Anchoring the team at first base will likely be Rixon Wingrove, the 6-foot-4, , 260 pound Brisbane Bandit who clocked seven home runs and drove in 26 runs last season. In the 2023 Classic, he was Australia’s best batter, slashing .375/.444/.625, with a home run and seven RBI. He also put up a perfect 1.000 fielding percentage in 39 innings, a brilliant receiver for the Aussie infield.
On the pitching side, Team Australia is a bit weaker. Daniel McGrath led Australia with six innings pitched in the last WBC, but will not appear in the 2026 edition of the Classic. Blake Townsend is among the squad’s best hurlers, and pitched an inning of scoreless baseball in the 2023 WBC. He walked three, and struck out one. In a six-year Minor League career, Townsend has logged an impressive 2.84 ERA and 243 strikeouts over 228.1 innings pitched. He was dominant for Altoona in the Eastern League last season, with a 2.05 ERA and 52 K’s in 66 innings. The southpaw represents one of Australia’s best lefty options on the mound. On the other hand, righty Warwick Saupold sits second on the active ABL Strikeouts record, with 276 through the 2025-26 season. Detroit fans might also remember Saupold’s 106.2 innings in a Tigers uniform, pitching to a 4.98 ERA with 70 strikeouts and an 8-4 Record.
Another righty to watch on the mound is active ABL strikeout king Todd Van Steensel, whose 284 strikeouts narrowly surpassed Saupold after the 2025-26 season. Van Steensel pitched three scoreless innings for the Aussies in the 2023 WBC, and in three total Classics he hasn’t allowed a run. Six strikeouts and a .667 WHIP make the Sydney native an experienced and successful leader for the green-and-gold.
Milwaukee Brewers Wall of Honor inductee and 1999 MLB All-Star Dave Nilsson manages the Australian National Team, a role held since 2018. His first WBC came in 2023, where he led the team to its historic run.. He also coached for the Lake Country Dockhounds in the American Association, and has managed the Brisbane Bandits since 2014. He previously managed the Bandits as a player-manager in the 1996-97 season and led their 2010 campaign. He led the Bandits to their first Claxton Shield Championship (the championship of the ABL) in 2016, which was followed by three additional championships in the next three seasons to complete an unprecedented ABL four-peat.
So, what is Australia capable of in the 2026 World Baseball Classic? What can fans from down under – and around the world – expect?
Perhaps the biggest handicap for the Australians is their bad luck of the draw. For this classic, Australia was placed in Pool C in Tokyo, alongside Czechia, Taiwan (competing as Chinese Taipei), South Korea and Japan. While the fan-favorite Czechs are a team Australia can (and should) feel confident in facing, the Taiwanese, Koreans and Japanese represent three of the top four national teams in the world as ranked by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, the organization which jointly organizes the WBC with Major League Baseball. The Australians have a solid chance against Chinese Taipei and handed Korea an 8-7 defeat in the Tokyo Dome in 2023. But the Japanese later pummeled them 7-1, the Aussies’ only loss in pool play. That result set up a win-and-advance game against the Czechs, which Australia won 7-3 after close-run early innings. They went on to lose their quarterfinal matchup against Cuba, 4-3.
The Australians had the benefit of an uncharacteristically weak Korean team and a winless Chinese squad, who failed to qualify for the 2026 edition of the WBC. While this Australian roster has lots of potential, it just doesn’t stack up to its competition this time around. If the Australians were, for example, in Pool A, I’d give them a much greater chance of advancing. Still, the team is experienced, and led by a great manager. They won’t be the worst team in their pool. I don’t think anyone should count them out entirely.
Best-case Result:
2-2, advancing from Pool B with wins over Chinese Taipei and Czechia, as well as a close loss to Korea and an almost-certain thrashing by Japan. In this scenario, they’d advance over South Korea by way of tiebreakers. It’s not likely, but it’s possible if Korea has another disappointing WBC campaign and if the ABL’s stars shine to their fullest potential.
Worst-case Result:
0-4, falling into qualification competition for the next WBC. This scenario is also unlikely, but possible. While I don’t think it’s likely that the Czechs will beat the Aussies, anything can happen on the diamond and the Czechs are no pushovers. Unfortunately, this result is also more in line with Australia’s pre-2023 WBC performances. Teams that finish last in their Pools do not automatically qualify for the next WBC and must earn their slot back through Qualifier competitions.
The Likely Scenario:
1-3, failing to advance but qualifying for the next Classic. The Australians will likely beat Czechia, and if they don’t, I imagine they’d be able to bounce up off the mat and ruin someone else’s Classic in retribution. Nilsson is a strong manager, and he’s assembled arguably Australia’s best international roster.
Batter to Watch:
Travis Bazzana – An electric young star with massive NCAA numbers, Bazzana has the potential to take the Aussie offense and infield to new levels on the World’s biggest stage. He hit just nine homers in the minor leagues last season, a sizable (but not unusual) drop from his 28-big-fly campaign in 2024 with Oregon State.
Pitcher to Watch:
Warwick Saupold – The veteran hurler for Australia has played in three previous WBC tournaments and a WBC Qualifier for Australia, notching 9.1 Innings pitched with only two runs allowed on his watch. The oldest pitcher on the Aussie roster, Saupold has been further up the baseball pyramid than anyone else in the pen. Stepping up as a leader for the Australian pitching staff will be critical to the team’s success.