We haven't seen this much talent together in 1 game in a long time

In the pages of the New York Times in the spring of 2005, a just-announced tournament to be known as the “World Baseball Classic” was being touted for one particular potential pairing.

“Baseball’s first world cup will probably be decided,” David Leonhardt wrote, “by a matchup between one of the most fearsome lineups ever assembled and one of the finest pitching staffs.”

The paper speculated, as many did, that the Dominican Republic could send luminaries like Miguel Tejada, Albert Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz to the plate, while the U.S. could counter with the awesome arms of Roger Clemens, Roy Halladay, John Smoltz, Roy Oswalt, Curt Schilling or Randy Johnson.

It didn’t exactly work out that way.

The D.R. did, indeed, send some big boppers to the 2006 tourney, including future Hall of Famers Pujols, Ortiz and Adrian Beltré. But it wasn’t the complete cast the small Caribbean country was capable of contending with.

And while the U.S. lineup fielded future Cooperstown entrants Ken Griffey Jr., Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones, they were all in their 30s. On the pitching side, a 43-year-old Clemens, who at the time was still a free agent and pondering retirement, was the most accomplished arm who volunteered for the event.

In that inaugural Classic, neither the D.R. nor the U.S. was able to advance to the finals. Those spots were instead occupied by Cuba and tournament champion Japan.

In the 20 years since, Japan has owned this event, winning it three times. The D.R. and U.S., with one title apiece (2013 for the D.R., ‘17 for the U.S.), have had more disappointing trajectories.

That’s what makes Sunday night’s semifinal tilt at Miami’s loanDepot park so special.

In its history, the World Baseball Classic has slowly been gathering steam in terms of getting the stars to literally align. And this battle between a red-hot D.R. lineup that has already tied a tournament record for taters (14, tied with Mexico in 2009) and the game’s greatest young arm in reigning National League Cy Young winner Paul Skenes is the kind of matchup this event was initially envisioned to bring us.

“What can we expect? An unreal environment, right?” Team USA manager Mark DeRosa said. “I expect it to be one of the best games of all time.”

Are we overselling it? Well, one never knows how the ball will bounce (or fly) on a particular night.

But with the help of MLB.com reporter and researcher Brian Murphy, let’s put this collection of talent in context:

• There were 41 players total in the American League and National League last year who garnered votes on the MVP ballot, in which 10 names are cast by each voter in each league. And of those 41, no less than 18 are on these active rosters (nine on each team): Skenes, Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, Bobby Witt Jr., Byron Buxton, Kyle Schwarber, Pete Crow-Armstrong, Brice Turang and Will Smith for the U.S.; Juan Soto, Julio Rodríguez, Fernando Tatis Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Manny Machado, Ketel Marte, Geraldo Perdomo, Junior Caminero and Cristopher Sánchez for the D.R.

So it’s not just about the big names (every one of those players is eligible to participate in this game, with the exception of Sánchez, who just started for the D.R. in its quarterfinals win over Korea), it’s about big names performing at the peak of their powers.

And of course, the above list doesn’t even include past MVP winners Bryce Harper and Paul Goldschmidt on the active U.S. roster, with Harper the likely starter at first base.

• This will be just the second WBC semifinal or final in which both starting lineups have a player at every position who played in the Majors the previous year. The only other time this happened was the 2017 title game between Puerto Rico and the USA.

• The combined 2016 FanGraphs WAR accumulated by the players in both starting lineups of that 2017 title game was 55.5.

If you took just USA's starting lineup from the 2026 quarterfinals clash with Canada, plus semifinals starter Skenes, that single lineup's combined fWAR last season was 58.4. And the combined 2025 fWAR of the D.R.’s quarterfinals lineup, plus semifinals starter Luis Severino, was 44.1.

So the combined fWAR of Sunday’s matchup, based only on Friday’s starting lineups and the probable starting pitchers, is 102.2, close to double that 2017 game.

That WAR total would also surpass the starting lineups from the 2025 All-Star Game (97.8)!

• If you optimized each WBC lineup, that WAR total goes up. Say you replace D.R. starting catcher Agustín Ramírez (0.0 fWAR in 2025) with Austin Wells (3.0). Theoretically, Team USA could put Gunnar Henderson (4.8) at third base for Alex Bregman (3.5) and put Buxton (5.0) somewhere in the outfield in place of Roman Anthony (2.7).

If you made all those changes, the combined U.S.-D.R. WAR total for Sunday’s game would be 108.8, surpassing the starting lineups from every MLB All-Star Game since at least 2015!

• The starting lineups for these two teams from the quarterfinals, plus the probable starters for the semis, encompass 17 players who have been named to an All-Star team in the past. That would be the most All-Stars to start in a WBC semifinal or final game, surpassing the 11 All-Stars who played in the 2017 final between USA and Puerto Rico.

There is going to be so much talent on the field Sunday night … and on the periphery. These two teams’ batting practices have been a veritable who’s who. Over here, you might see six-time All-Star Lance Berkman hanging out and talking about hitting mechanics with members of the U.S. team. Over there, it’s the legendary Griffey snapping photos for Getty Images. The Dominican workouts have been attended by not only manager Pujols and general manager Nelson Cruz but also Beltré, Pedro Martínez, Big Papi, Edwin Encarnación and José Bautista, among others.

It just goes to show that greatness attracts greatness. So it is with the construction of these rosters. A tournament that took time to legitimize itself in the minds of some of the best players of the game, to get them to commit to the Spring Training interruption, has truly taken off.

And the public has definitely noticed.

The 2026 WBC has already set the all-time tournament attendance record, and the pool rounds were the most watched of all-time. The U.S.-Mexico game garnered more than 5 million viewers -- the most ever for a single game in the WBC. And for Italy-Mexico to get more than 2 million sets of eyeballs the next night speaks to how much the interest has bled into even the matchups that weren’t necessarily front of mind at the start of the tournament.

It’s not just the principal position players suiting up for their countries; it’s a peak, prime pitcher like Skenes, raising his right hand before he’s reached his proper pay day because he knows how important and intense this tournament can be.

That’s led us here, to a matchup two decades in the making.

Back when the Classic was introduced, we dreamed of what it would be like if the United States and the Dominican Republic put their best players on the field against each other.

Now we’ve got it, and as the numbers demonstrate, it’s even better than an All-Star Game.

With a lot more at stake, too. Not bad for mid-March.