Given his experience in closing out international games for Korea and his track record in the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO), KT Wiz reliever Park Yeong-hyun is a strong candidate to assume the ninth-inning role at the upcoming World Baseball Classic (WBC). But with a major league reliever on the verge of joining the national team, Park, 22, is more than willing to step aside and offer whatever help the new teammate needs. Korea will finalize its WBC roster in early February, and the list of candidates to make the team as relievers is full of top-notch closers for their respective KBO clubs. But no one has recorded more saves than Park’s 60 over the past two seasons, and he led all pitchers with 35 saves in 2025. And Korea’s relief corps will also receive a huge reinforcement in the form of Riley O’Brien, a half-Korean reliever for the St. Louis Cardinals. Under eligibility rules for the WBC, a player can represent the country of birth for at least one of his parents, even if he himself wasn’t born there. O’Brien, a Seattle native who has a Korean-born mother, recently told St. Louis
