Kansas City Royals starting pitcher Michael Wacha threw three innings against Brazil.
Kansas City Royals right-handed starting pitcher Michael Wacha is entering his 14th Major League season. Before that begins, he is also suiting up for Team USA as one of the more experienced pitchers participating in the 2026 World Baseball Classic.
The 34-year-old has built a long career on durability and command, tallying 110 wins with a 3.89 ERA across 13 MLB seasons while pitching for six different organizations.
Last season with Kansas City, Wacha made 31 appearances and logged a 10-13 record with a 3.86 ERA and 126 strikeouts. The veteran righty has remained a steady big league rotation presence for more than a decade after debuting in 2013.
That experience helped earn Wacha a spot on Team USA’s pitching staff for this year’s World Baseball Classic. He took the ball Friday against Brazil, working three innings in relief of Logan Webb while allowing four hits and three runs. The outing itself was a grind for Wacha, but the overall performance by the American pitching staff produced a historic milestone that the team announced on Saturday.
According to USA Baseball on X, Friday’s group effort on the mound set a new World Baseball Classic record for the program.
Webb, Wacha, Mason Miller and Gabe Speier combined to strike out 16 Brazilian hitters, the highest single-game total ever recorded by Team USA in WBC history.
Webb led the way with six strikeouts, while Wacha contributed five during his three innings of work. Miller added three punchouts out of the bullpen and Speier finished the effort with two more, giving Team USA the 16-strikeout mark that surpassed the team’s previous tournament record.
For Wacha, the appearance added another big game outing to a career that has already included several notable postseason moments. Early in his career with the St. Louis Cardinals, he earned National League Championship Series MVP honors during the club’s 2013 playoff run that ended in a World Series loss to the Boston Red Sox. This October helped establish Wacha as a dependable big-game arm, and he is still doing it on big stages 13 years later.
While Wacha did not dominate Friday’s game individually, his five strikeouts in three innings contributed to the record-setting performance by USA Baseball. Strikeouts have not always been the calling card for Wacha, but across his 13 MLB seasons he has still accumulated more than 1,400 of them, which ranks 22nd among active pitchers.
Team USA’s record-setting total also highlighted the depth of its pitching staff, combining the starting experience of arms like Wacha and Webb with high-octane bullpen options such as Miller. Pitching is often a question mark for USA baseball, not because America lacks pitching, but because getting top arms to commit to early-spring max effort innings has been a challenge.