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Rays' Aybar A Surprise Pick For WBC

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By MARC LANCASTER | The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 24, 2009

PORT CHARLOTTE - Final rosters for the World Baseball Classic were released Tuesday evening, and as expected Evan Longoria didn't make the cut for Team USA.

However, there was one Rays-related surprise. Willy Aybar is on the 23-man final roster for his native Dominican Republic, even though he wasn't listed on the provisional roster released last month. According to Rays executive vice president Andrew Friedman, the Rays didn't learn that Aybar would be added until last night.

Aybar, who is slated to fill a utility infield role for the Rays this season, will play first base for the Dominican team. His country needed him after losing projected first basemen Carlos Pena of the Rays and Albert Pujols of the Cardinals, both of whom underwent surgery in the offseason. With those two gone, the Dominican was left with two third basemen (Alex Rodriguez and Adrian Beltre), three middle infielders (Hanley Ramirez, Jose Reyes and Robinson Cano) and utilityman Jose Bautista.

Two other Rays were on rosters as expected—Akinori Iwamura for Japan and J.P. Howell for the U.S. Iwamura has been with his team in Japan for training and won't join the Rays until after the WBC. Howell will pitch in games Wednesday and Saturday for the Rays before heading to the U.S. training camp in Clearwater next week.

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