Paul Skenes Becomes Second Player to Commit to Team USA for 2026 World Baseball Classic

The Pittsburgh Pirates’ star pitcher will represent the United States at the 2026 WBC in March.

Paul Skenes #30 of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches during the second inning against the New York Mets at Citi Field in New York City on May 12, 2025. Jim McIsaac/Getty Images

Just two members of Team USA for the 2026 World Baseball Classic have been announced but they are arguably the biggest stars at their respective positions. A month after Aaron Judge was named captain of the United States, he was joined on the team by reigning NL Rookie of the Year, Paul Skenes, on Tuesday.

He made the announcement on MLB Network where he revealed that it’s something he’s always thought about but wasn’t sure if the chance would ever arise.

“This is one thing as a fan of the game, watching the previous World Baseball Classics that I was like, ‘If I ever get the chance to do this, I’m never saying no.’ So, this is going to be the first one,” Skenes recalled.

This won’t be the first time that Skenes will represent his country as he played on the Collegiate National Team in 2021 and 2022. He totaled 11 total innings during those appearances, which came during offseasons while he was enrolled in college at the Air Force Academy.

With his school of choice, Skenes also represented the United States by competing for a service academy for two years. He joined the Air Force out of high school, where he was named a First-Team All-American and won the John Olerud Award as the best two-way player in college baseball.

From there, he then transferred to LSU, where he won the College World Series and became the first overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft. Since joining the Big Leagues last season, Skenes has been the most exciting pitcher in the sport as a flamethrower on the mound. He threw six innings of no-hit ball, while striking out 11 batters, in his first career win, and his average fastball velocity of 98.8 mph was the highest in MLB last season.

For his efforts, Skenes became the fifth rookie in All-Star Game history to start on the mound, and he’d rack up 91 percent of the voting share for the NL Rookie of the Year award. Skenes finished third in NL Cy Young voting, despite not making his MLB debut until 40 games into the season.

Skenes hasn’t been quite as dominant this season but still ranks in the top eight of the Senior Circuit in ERA, strikeouts and WAR amongst pitchers. Even with that, he was a slam dunk choice by Team USA manager, Mark DeRosa, who spent 16 years in the majors.

“DeRosa called and I was like, ‘Yeah, I’m in,’” Skenes recalled of their initial conversation in April. “He’s like, ‘Well, all right, we got to work through some stuff.’ I’m like, ‘DeRo, I’m in.’ It really felt like I was talking him into it.”

Judge was previously announced as the first player on Team USA, as well as the captain, on April 14. This is Judge’s tenth season in the majors, and Skenes’s second, but this will be both of their first appearances in the World Baseball Classic.

The United States could certainly use players of their caliber after falling short in the last WBC in 2023. The U.S. was the reigning champion, having won the 2017 WBC, but the Americans fell to Team Japan in the 2023 WBC Championship Game. The contest memorably ended with then-Angels teammates, Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout, squaring off, with Ohtani on the mound and Trout at the plate. With Japan nursing a 3-2 lead, Ohtani struck out Trout with two outs in the ninth inning to win gold for Japan.

The 2026 World Baseball Classic will be the sixth edition of the tournament, which first began in 2006. It didn’t start out well for the United States, which didn’t medal in any of the first three WBC events, before golds and silvers in the last two. Japan has been the most successful team with three gold medals and two bronze medals across the five previous tournaments.

The 2026 WBC will take place from March 5-17, with 20 competing nations. It will be hosted by three countries—the United States, Puerto Rico, and Japan—with the knockout stage being entirely in the U.S. Miami will host the title game, just as it did for the 2023 tournament. With it taking place during MLB Spring Training, teams like the Pirates, with Skenes, and the Yankees, with Judge, will release those players from Spring Training duty, with the WBC essentially serving as their preseason action.

This could be the first of several times that Skenes gets to represent the United States in an international tournament, with the 2028 Summer Olympics welcoming back baseball as an Olympic sport. It was dropped from the Summer Olympic program for the 2012 and 2016 Games, brought back temporarily for the 2020 Olympics, and then dropped again for last year in Paris.

With the Olympics running simultaneously to the MLB regular season, major league players have historically not competed at the Olympics, in those years in which it actually had baseball as a sport. Numerous MLB players, including Judge, have expressed the desire to compete at the Olympics, though their availability remains a big question mark.

For now, players like Skenes and Judge will have to settle with representing the United States in the World Baseball Classic.