Red Sox place four on Team USA Premier 12 roster

The MLB postseason is dominating the baseball world, which makes sense because it’s, well, the MLB postseason. Once that is over, though, baseball here in the States ceases to exist at a professional level for the winter. There is baseball in other parts of the world, though, and this year that includes the Premier 12 tournament. This is the second iteration of the tournament, which takes place every four years.

The tournament is hosted by the World Baseball Softball Confederation, the same group that runs the World Baseball Classic. With baseball returning to the Olympics in 2020 for the first time since 2008, this year’s Premier 12 tournament will serve as a qualifier. The tournament pits the top twelve ranked international programs in the world. The United States is ranked second with Japan claiming the number one spot. Korea, who won the inaugural event in 2015, is number three.

On Thursday, Team USA announced their roster. The group, who will be managed by Joe Girardi, is composed of professional players but those on 40-man rosters are not eligible. As a result, there are some really interesting prospects set to participate. Four of those prospects are in the Red Sox organization, which is the most of any team in baseball. Those four prospects are: 1B/3B Bobby Dalbec, RHP Tanner Houck, 2B/SS C.J. Chatham, and RHP Noah Song. The latter is the most interesting given that Song has his military commitment, giving some hope he may indeed be able to push that back and report to spring training next year. Alex Speier throws some cold water on that idea, though, reporting that he received permission a while back to participate in this tournament. There is still a chance things could change, but as of now Song is still expected to report to flight school this winter.

Along with the Red Sox prospects, this roster also includes some of the best prospects in all of baseball. The team will be led by Angels outfield prospect Jo Adell, who is a consensus top five prospect at this point. Others on MLB Pipeline’s top 100 list include Braves outfielder Drew Waters, White Sox infielder Andre Vaughn, Padres infielder Xavier Edwards, Phillies pitcher Spencer Howard and Diamondbacks catcher Daulton Varsho.

As far as the international rosters go, there doesn’t appear to be any current Red Sox players who will participate. Chris Cotillo mentioned that Dedgar Jimenez was going to try out for Venezuela’s roster, but he doesn’t appear to have made it. Tzu-Wei Lin would also seem like a slam dunk for Taiwan’s roster, but he also doesn’t appear to be there. Daniel McGrath would have been on Australia’s roster but will not participate due to his workload this summer.

There will, however, be a few old friends that I noticed on the rosters that have been released. Esteban Quiroz, who was traded to the Padres for Colten Brewer, will be on Mexico’s team. Iván De Jesús Jr., who was an infielder for the Red Sox for about a month after coming over in the Nick Punto Deal before being sent to Pittsburgh in the trade that brought Joel Hanrahan and Brock Holt to Boston, will be on Puerto Rico’s team. Che-Hsuan Lin, a former minor-league outfield in the system who got a brief cup of coffee in 2012, will be on Taiwan’s roster.

The Premier 12 tournament will begin with three four-team groups playing round robins. Team USA plays theirs in Guadalajara, Mexico on November 2. The tournament runs through November 17 and ends with a gold medal game in Tokyo.