This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things
baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the
field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
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The Joe Sheehan Newsletter: MLB + IOC = NFW
Vol. 18, No. 60
July 15, 2026
That wasn’t much of an All-Star Game. Despite six or seven of the best pitchers in baseball sitting this one out, there were just four runs, ten hits, one extra-base hit, and a 39% strikeout rate. The middle innings were a slog, quick frames with little action interspersed with ceremonies and concerts and various delays. This was probably a 2:10 game inflated to 2:45 and lasting well past 11 p.m. in the East.
This is, last year notwithstanding, just the way modern All-Star Games will be played. Well-rested pitchers asked to throw an inning at a time can dominate even the best hitters in the sport. Half the game will be played by a fairly anonymous group. No single player participates in enough of the game to break out, and even the best stories, like Miguel Vargas’s home run, are unlikely to cross over into the mainstream.
All-Star Games are anachronisms, and the argument that MLB’s is closer to a real game than the ones in other leagues is weak sauce. They had Kyle Schwarber trying to have a conversation with Joe Davis while facing 95-mph fastballs in the third; no one is taking this seriously. That the All-Star Game is a marketing event that doesn’t have enough to market is one reason the Home Run Derby has supplanted the Game as the marquee event of the extended baseball weekend. At least you get good visuals.
Speaking of baseball-flavored substances, Evan Drellich reported that MLB, as part of its effort to have major leaguers participate in the 2028 Olympics, proposed extended suspensions for players picked to play in the Olympics who do not participate. MLB is, not without reason, worried that many of the game’s stars won't play after the IOC reinstated baseball for these Olympics, to be held in the sport’s home country. MLB’s proposal is that players who decline to participate in the one-week Olympic tournament, to take place from July 13-19, would be restricted from MLB play for 25 days, from July 10 through August 3.
Like many MLB proposals in these CBA negotiations, it’s a non-starter, and I don’t want to spend too much time on it. The idea that playing or not playing in the Olympics would be allowed to have such a significant effect on real MLB playoff races is too silly to engage with. MLB continues to treat the players as if it’s 1948 and they have a house union and no rights; this is just part and parcel.
No, what I want to ask is why MLB is twisting itself into knots to placate the IOC. The IOC has never respected or cared for baseball. Prior to 1992, baseball had never been played at more than two consecutive Olympics. That year was also just the third time, after 1924 and 1968, that baseball was more than a demonstration or exhibition sport at the Games. After 2008, the IOC dumped baseball for three of the next four Olympics.
It was during that period that MLB created, grew, and sustained through a global pandemic the World Baseball Classic. I may not be the world’s biggest WBC honk, but after six events in 20 years, the WBC has become the premier world championship of baseball. The event is highly competitive; four nations have won the six titles, and seven have participated in the championship round. It has lore. It has heroes. It has rivalries. It has controversies. In 20 years the WBC has created more great baseball moments than exist in the entire history of Olympic baseball.
MLB doesn’t need the Olympics. The baseball tournament will be a pale imitation of the WBC, six teams playing a total of 12 games over seven days, with the first six merely a seeding round -- no one will be eliminated at that stage. The IOC has set it up this way to minimize disruption to the MLB calendar, but there’s really no way to avoid that. Stapling this to the All-Star break means MLB will have to take an 11-day break, maybe 14 days, at a time when MLB teams draw best and have the sports stage to themselves.
The ballplayers competing at the Olympics will take pride in doing so, but the pinnacle for baseball players is the World Series, and second to that is a WBC title. It’s hard to build two-minute soft-focus featurettes around guys making $26 million a year who are clearly on a break from their real jobs.
Mostly, though, the Olympic baseball tournament will, at absolute best, be the #5 sport at the Games for NBC. The network won’t be promoting or programming baseball ahead of the core four of gymnastics, swimming, basketball, or track. I am not convinced baseball will be a priority ahead of beach volleyball. One benefit of a Los Angeles Games is that NBC can actually show the most popular competitions live to the U.S. audience, and baseball is going to have a hard time breaking through the most established Olympic sports that have wider appeal and better stories.
There’s no future here, either. The Olympic Games being held close to the All-Star break in the United States are the best-case scenario and they still require giving up a week to ten days of summer attendance. The 2032 Olympics will be held from July 23 to August 8 in Australia, and there’s no way for MLB players to participate in that tournament without blowing up the summer. The 2036 Olympics don’t have a date or location yet, but they will almost certainly not be played in the Eastern Hemisphere. The 2028 Olympics are going to be a one-off for MLB players and, as history shows, the IOC doesn’t need an excuse to bury America’s pastime.
The 2028 Olympic baseball tournament, a whopping 12 games in seven days, won’t have the footprint to make a meaningful impact on baseball’s popularity no matter who plays. It will be a secondary sport at best for the main broadcaster. Hell, it will be the #2 American team sport behind hoops. It can’t be the pinnacle achievement for the players, who have both a professional goal and an international goal ahead of an Olympic title. Even if I’m wrong about all that and it’s a wild success, there’s no practical way to repeat it in 2032 without wrecking the MLB season.
MLB has to back away from the 2028 Olympics. Let career minor leaguers play, let some prospects play, hell, let lower-tier major leaguers play if their teams don’t mind. Do not alter the schedule at all, do not force players to play. MLB has the World Baseball Classic. The WBC, whatever its challenges, is a far better promotional vehicle for baseball than Olympic baseball has ever been or will ever be. MLB doesn’t need the Olympics, and it definitely doesn’t need to interrupt a championship season for the Olympics. -
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