journalist Francys Romero<\/a>, and is awaiting approval from the Red Sox to participate.<\/p>\n\u201cYou don\u2019t know \u2019til you know,\u201d Great Britain manager Bradley Marcelino said Tuesday at MLB\u2019s Winter Meetings. \u201cYou hear good things. You hear the interest level. We\u2019re very optimistic. But in this environment, you don\u2019t want to get too far ahead because there\u2019s the (MLB) team, the eligibility part, all those things that you have to continue to work through.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapman pitched for his native Cuba in the 2009 WBC, mere months before defecting during a tournament in the Netherlands, and has not appeared in a WBC since. Gary Anderson, performance director for the Great Britain team, explained that Chapman is eligible to play for Great Britain \u201cthrough heritage through British overseas territories with his family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chapman\u2019s paternal grandparents emigrated to Cuba from Jamaica, which was a British colony until 1962.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe is very excited,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cHe wanted to make it very clear that he was interested. As soon as he\u2019s interested, we\u2019re interested.\u201d<\/p>\n
Great Britain qualified for the WBC for the first time in 2023 and went 1-3, beating Colombia and losing to the United States, Canada and Mexico. They are in Pool B for the 2026 WBC, along with the U.S., Mexico, Italy and Brazil.<\/p>\n
Runs will be hard to come by, but if Great Britain can carry a lead into the ninth inning, they\u2019ll have a big arm ready. Chapman posted a 1.17 ERA and 32 saves for the Red Sox in 2025, his eighth All-Star season in the majors.<\/p>\n
\u201cTruly exciting,\u201d Anderson said of possibly having Chapman on Great Britain\u2019s final roster. \u201cWhat it does is give a lot of credibility to the program. Players like that then attract other players as well. It shows how serious we are about progression. We want to get out of the group and get down to Miami, and someone like Chapman is going to increase our chances.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014 Fish, chips and 105 mph fastballs. Boston Red Sox closer Aroldis Chapman, the lefty flame-thrower…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":622915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[32277,748,393,4884,14881,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-622914","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-boston-red-sox","11":"tag-britain","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-northern-ireland","16":"tag-scotland","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115691886051833361","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=622914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/622914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/622915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=622914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=622914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=622914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}