The World Baseball Classic curse talk is back, and this time it’s not even a stretch, because the actual tournament MVP is out here having a worse year than the guy who just got shredded for seven runs in four innings.
That’s not a joke. That’s just where the sport is right now in July.
Why the World Baseball Classic Curse Talk Is Already Back
The 2026 World Baseball Classic ran March 5 through 17, Team USA lost the final 3-2 to Venezuela, and since then a good chunk of the sport’s best players have either gotten hurt, fallen off a cliff, or both. Every WBC cycle drags this same curse conversation back out, but this year it’s got actual receipts behind it, one general manager included.
Paul Skenes pitched deep into that tournament and looked like the best pitcher on the planet doing it. Cal Raleigh went to represent his country and got benched inside his own event. Tarik Skubal tried to do the responsible thing and got hurt anyway a month later. Aaron Judge captained Team USA and hasn’t played a big league game since the end of May. Somewhere in the middle of all of it, the guy who actually won the MVP award is quietly having one of the worse stretches of his own career too.
We’re going to get into every single one of these, and the honest answer up front is some of this really does trace back to March. Some of it very clearly doesn’t. Nobody’s going to care about that distinction once the narrative sets in…
Paul Skenes Just Had the Worst Start of His Career
Paul Skenes just walked off a mound after allowing SEVEN earned runs in four innings against the Phillies on July 1st, the worst start of his career, and if you’ve been a Pirates fan waiting for this arm to be the thing that finally makes this franchise matter again, that was a rough one to sit through.
His ERA jumped from 3.10 to 3.62 in one outing. That’s not a bad start, that’s a start that moves the whole season-long number by half a run on its own. Over his last nine starts he’s sitting on a 5.36 ERA and he hasn’t won a game he’s started in nine tries. His own manager came out after and said he wasn’t sure if the guy’s fatigued, which is about as close as a manager gets to publicly wondering if his ace is cooked without actually saying it.
This is the same Paul Skenes who went into the WBC in March and pitched like he belonged on the mound in the ninth inning of a gold medal game. He came home a completely different guy, and we’re a Pirates fan account, so watching that turn happen in real time is not a fun way to spend July.
Cal Raleigh Got Benched in His Own Tournament and Never Recovered
Cal Raleigh went 0-for-9 in the World Baseball Classic and got benched by his own team in his own tournament, and the slump he came home with never really let up. Through June he was hitting .167 with a 70 wRC+, the single worst year-over-year drop of any hitter in the entire sport.
Here’s the part that actually matters. This isn’t a fan theory or a stat we’re connecting on our own. Mariners GM Justin Hollander went on the record and said the WBC prep “might have also contributed” to what’s gone wrong with his own catcher. That’s the general manager of his own team, not a guy yelling on a podcast, saying the tournament might genuinely be part of it.
Raleigh’s actually the one case out of everybody on this list where the front office itself is willing to connect the dots out loud.
Tarik Skubal Did It the Safe Way and Still Ended Up in Surgery
Tarik Skubal tried to play this smart. He limited himself to one start in the World Baseball Classic specifically to protect his body, got called a quitter for it by people who wanted him to go all in for his country, and then suffered an elbow injury anyway a month later in a completely unrelated regular season start.
He had surgery. He missed six weeks. He went from reigning Cy Young energy to being a fading Tigers team’s biggest trade chip, and none of it actually traces back to the tournament at all, he got hurt doing his actual job in May.
Which is kind of the whole problem with this curse talk. The guy who protected himself on purpose still ended up under the knife, and he’s going to get lumped in with everybody else anyway.
Even the Actual WBC MVP Came Home Worse
Maikel Garcia hit .385 in the tournament and dragged Venezuela to a title over Team USA, and he’s come home having a worse year across the board than he had last season, worse in some ways than what Skenes has looked like the last month. The guy who actually won the thing is struggling too.
Team USA’s own captain, Aaron Judge, tore into a dive back in April and ended up with a rib injury that’s kept him out since May 31st, looking at an August return that already knocked him clean out of the MVP conversation. That one’s not the tournament either, that’s a routine baseball injury that happened to a guy who happened to captain a team in March.
Bobby Witt Jr. was on that same Team USA roster and he’s leading all of baseball in Outs Above Average right now, so it’s not like everybody who touched this tournament came home cursed. Which is kind of the point nobody wants to make once the narrative’s already writing itself.
The tournament’s going to take the blame for Skenes, for Judge, for Skubal, whether it actually deserves it or not, because Raleigh’s own GM already opened that door, and now every hurt guy who so much as put on a Team USA or Venezuela jersey back in March is walking through it. The guy we’re actually watching for it the closest, the Pirates arm we needed healthy more than anybody else on this list, just turned in the worst start of his career doing exactly that.
