Dusty Baker's got his slugger! On Friday afternoon, Nicaragua announced that Mark Vientos, the Mets' power-hitting third baseman, intends to play for the team at the upcoming World Baseball Classic this March. Originally born in Norwalk, Conn., Vientos is eligible for the national team through his mother, Katy Wilmore, who was born in Nicaragua.
Though rosters won't be finalized until February, this is a huge boon for the national team, whose lineup has been in need of an infusion of offense since appearing in the country's first World Baseball Classic in 2023. That year, the team's 4.91 ERA was tied with Italy for eighth in the tournament, but its offense put up just a .499 OPS -- third worst in the field.
It was a story that repeated in March's Taipei Qualifier, which Nicaragua swept to finish first and advance to the 2026 tournament. The pitching staff allowed just two earned runs in 29 innings, but the team needed back-to-back 2-1 extra-innings victories over South Africa and Spain to pull it off.
Though Vientos struggled for much of the 2025 season, the infielder has hit 44 home runs across the past two years with a 115 OPS+ -- good for 15% better than the league average hitter. Vientos will also bring big league experience with him, something the national team is short on. At the Qualifiers, 20 of the 30 players on the team had never even faced big leaguers before as reported by Fernando Rayo of 8 Deportivo.
Vientos will be lining up for Baker, the new Nicaraguan skipper who is back in the manager's seat for the first time since reaching the ALCS with the Astros in 2023.
“I think all the groups are hard," Baker said at World Baseball Classic media day earlier this week. "Anybody can beat anybody at any given time. I’m just hoping to get my team prepared to play and try to be the best that they can be. When you get there and have an opportunity and train, who knows what the outcome can be. I always played to win. I try to prepare my teams to win.
"We don’t have very long to prepare. Guys have probably three weeks. Without putting too much in their heads, we want to make them as natural as possible but try to make them better in a short period of time.”
Baker was recently in Guatemala, where he saw the national team win gold at the 2025 Central American games. That team had a number of WBC veterans on the squad, including former Major Leaguer Cheslor Cuthbert, Juan Montes, Benjamin Alegria (6-for-12, 2 doubles at the '23 Classic) and Elián Miranda, who delivered Nicaragua's first World Baseball Classic run with a home run off Marcus Stroman in 2023.