[2] Two of the four qualifiers, Colombia and Israel, made their first appearance in the WBC, and both have secured their positions for the 2023 World Baseball Classic.

However, in an effort to reduce the likelihood that a team would be eliminated on statistical tiebreakers, the tournament schedule allowed for a seventh game at each pool-play site.

[9][10] In what NBC reported was thought to be the tallest batter-pitcher matchup in baseball history, the Dutch team's 7-foot-1-inch (2.16 m) Loek van Mil walked Israel's 6-foot-8-inch (2.03 m) Nate Freiman.

[11] Israel's catcher, Ryan Lavarnway, was named Pool A MVP, after going 5-for-9 (.556/.692/.889), with four walks, a home run, and three RBIs.

The game continued into extra innings, where Dominican Republic scored 7 runs in the 11th to win and finish the pool undefeated.

Manny Machado of the Dominican Republic was named MVP for the first-round Pool C bracket of the WBC, after batting .357.

Italy scored 5 runs in the bottom of the 9th inning to shock Mexico in the first game, then lost an extra-inning slugfest against Venezuela.

In the final game, Mexico defeated Venezuela in another slugfest and thought they had scored enough runs to advance on tiebreakers,[17] though this turned out not to be the case.

According to the rules as announced at the time, Mexico's last-place finish would have required it to participate in a qualifying tournament in order to re-qualify for the 2021 World Baseball Classic.

[20] Pool F started with Puerto Rico handing the Dominican Republic its first loss since the 2009 World Baseball Classic.

Under the qualification format in use at the time, the bottom four finishers from 2017 (Canada, China, Mexico, and Chinese Taipei) would've been forced to re-qualify for 2021.

[22] However, in January 2020, MLB announced it was expanding the field for the 2021 WBC from 16 teams to 20 and that all 16 participants from 2017 would receive automatic bids for 2021, thus sparing the bottom four nations from relegation to the qualifiers.