Versatility a necessity for two-way stars at Women's Baseball World Cup

THUNDER BAY, Ont. -- Modern-day baseball sees versatility as an asset. Female players see it as a necessity.

Check the rosters for the Women’s Baseball World Cup finals and you’ll find at least a dozen two-way players, many of whom have been doing it since long before Shohei Ohtani reached the big leagues. Ask what drove them to invest in both sides of the ball and you’ll be hit with a harsher reality.

“It’s usually on men’s teams where we feel like we have to do that,” said Team USA’s Olivia Pichardo, a 20-year-old who’s already made history by becoming the first woman to play Division I ball. “We have to give them as many options as possible to take away any sort of, I guess, excuses they may have for not having us on the team.”

Many of these players have a similar story: Inspired by parents or older siblings, they learned to play baseball as early as they could walk. By the time they reached the age of playing organized sports, though, they didn’t find many open doors.

Pichardo’s high school was too small to start a baseball team. So, she reached out to other schools within her league -- from prep to public schools to Catholic schools -- to see if she could try out.

“But none of those schools were interested in entertaining that idea,” Pichardo said.

She’s set on giving all of those institutions “the benefit of the doubt,” but that painted a picture of how hard she’d have to work to get her chance.

It’s not like these women are strangers to the juggling act. Pro baseball is rarely enough to pay the bills, so most of the athletes competing at the WBWC have 9-5 jobs. Some of them play professional softball, others have landed coaching jobs in pro leagues. A fair amount of them work in entirely different industries.

Among the ones who fall under that category is Team Canada’s Allison Schroder, who doubles as a firefighter in British Columbia.

“It’s definitely brought a certain calmness to me on the field,” Schroder said of fighting wildfires. “Like, 'I’ve had more pressure in the past two weeks than anything I’m gonna feel on the field. So it’s all good.'”

The versatility of players is not exclusive to the United States and Canada, either. Save for Japan, all of the teams that showed up at Port Arthur Stadium to kick off Day 1 of the finals on Sunday had at least one athlete listed as a two-way player.

“[In Mexico] when we’re younger, coming up playing baseball, everyone does everything,” Flor Valerio, a pitcher for Team Mexico and an outfielder with Panadería Santa Cruz in Tijuana, said in Spanish. “I’ve always liked hitting, but I chose to be a pitcher with the National Team. … All our hitters are so good, so I wasn’t even trying to compete with them.”

There are clear benefits to sticking as a two-way player.

Working to perfect your own arm slot or release point can make it easier to pick up on opposing pitchers’ trends when you’re in the box. Meanwhile, if you think like a hitter on the mound, chances are your pitch sequencing will be harder to predict.

“It’s like you have two catchers thinking about the batter,” Chinese Taipei’s Yu-Chuan Tu said through an interpreter. “It’s really beneficial.”

It takes the “chess not checkers” metaphor to a whole new level.

“That batter is me,” said Chinese Taipei’s Chiao-Yun Huang. “[When I’m on the mound] I am challenging myself.”

Still, there’s a reason why you don’t see this too often on the men’s side.

Ohtani has paved the way for a new crop of two-way talent, as evidenced by the six players listed as such selected in the 2024 MLB Draft. But teams are still taking a conservative approach to this, especially with top-end talent.

Take Pirates star pitcher Paul Skenes, for example, who gave up hitting once he joined LSU despite batting .367 with a 1.124 OPS at the NCAA Division I level. Jac Caglianone, taken by the Royals with the No. 6 pick in 2024, was drafted as a two-way player after posting a .419 average with 35 home runs at the University of Florida this year, but it remains to be seen if he'll continue to do both in the Minors.

Pichardo herself, a two-way player with the U.S. team, is deployed strictly as a hitter on the men’s team at Brown.

It’s also telling that the only WBWC final team without such an athlete is the six-time champion Japan, the sole country among the six that has a professional women’s baseball league.

Specialization, it turns out, is a privilege.

“We don’t have as many players on the women’s side,” said Huang. “So if you’re good at multiple things … you will practice multiple positions.”

Day 1 at Port Arthur Stadium

Japan starts repeat bid with a win: Veteran center fielder Iori Miura had two hits and two RBIs as Japan started the quest for a sixth straight WBWC gold with a 9-4 victory over Chinese Taipei.

Canada rides five-run first to win on home soil: Zoe Hicks drove in three runs and Alexane Fournier struck out six over five innings of two-run ball to help Canada kick off the finals with a 7-2 win over Mexico.