Way-too-early 2029 World Baseball Classic Team USA roster - ESPN

After the most star-studded United States team played in the 2026 World Baseball Classic, let's pull out the crystal ball and envision what the roster might look like for the next tournament.

Though future WBC dates have not been decided yet, the next edition would take place in 2029 if it follows the same three-year pattern, so we'll use that year for our roster prediction. Of course, assuming all of the best players participate, what we're really asking here is: Who will the top players in MLB be in 2028, the season that will determine roster choices? Though it's easy to assume the best players from 2025 will remain so in three years, we know that won't be the case. Players age, new talents emerge and good luck predicting which pitchers will remain healthy.

To make these predictions, we went back to 2010 and looked at the top three players at each of the eight positions on the diamond — leaving aside designated hitters and pitchers, and then grouping the corner outfielders together — in both Baseball-Reference WAR and adjusted batting runs (to focus only on offense). We then checked the results three years later: 2013, 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025. This produced a list of 207 different player seasons.

The primary questions to consider: How old are the game's top position players? How often do the players remain at the top of their positions three years later? Here were some of our findings:

Of the 207 unique player seasons, only 35 were from players 31 or older (under 17%).

If we raise the cutoff to 32 or older, it drops to only 22 seasons (10.6%).

The average age is what you might expect: 27.4 years.

There were more seasons from 24-and-younger players (36) than 31 or older (35).

There were 49 instances of a player