The World Baseball Classic is going through its awkward teenage phase. The wannabe actual World Series has matured from an ambitious idea into an event that shows real promise and frustrating clumsiness. It is still trying to find a voice that doesn’t crack when speaking to disinterested American sports fans and has some unsightly blemishes that need to be cleared up before it can be taken seriously as a world-class sporting event.

For many, WBC stands for Who Bloody Cares? The timing of the tournament is terrible. It happens in March when most of the American sporting public is geared toward the NFL offseason and college basketball. The early March start also means that baseball players, especially pitchers, haven’t ramped up to game shape. The tournament gets lukewarm support from Major League Baseball clubs, who are leery of having their players removed from the leisurely pace of spring training and placed in a high-stress environment that exposes them to injury. Why should we be invested in the tournament if MLB teams and top American players aren’t? Where art thou, Mike Trout, Bryce Harper, and Clayton Kershaw?

MLB needs to start thinking of the World Baseball Classic, which began in 2006 and is being played for the fourth time this year, as the new Midsummer Classic to reach its potential. The All-Star Game has grown tedious and boring. Interleague play and the information age have sapped much of the intrigue and novelty from the event. The ill-conceived gimmick of using the All-Star Game to award home field, which mercifully has been scrapped this year, resigned the game to a competitive purgatory between entertaining exhibition and real game. One way to provide entertainment, star power, and meaningful competition is to have the semifinals and final of the WBC replace the All-Star Game every four years.

This idea is a tweak on a brilliant thought Yankees manager Joe Girardi expressed about pumping up the WBC while taking some of the ennui out of the dead zone on the North American sports calendar — the All-Star break. Girardi proposed playing the semifinals and the final of the WBC during an expanded one-week All-Star break that would also feature the traditional All-Star Game. This would allow WBC pool play and the first round of the tournament to get pushed back to later in March, when players have had more time to round into form. It would also have players primed for the most important part of the tournament.

But the MLB All-Star Game is an overrated relic of a bygone era. Cede the spotlight to the WBC every four years. It would create more anticipation for both baseball showcases. It would also give many players a nice break that could result in a better product.

I’ve been a staunch WBC skeptic and critic. It’s an imperfect and inchoate showcase for the game, but you can’t ignore the passion, pride, and flair that permeate the event.

One of the major issues limiting the WBC is the mandated pitch limits. Pitchers are restricted to 65 pitches per game in the first round, 80 in the second round, and 95 in the final two rounds. Anyone who throws 50 pitches in a game must rest four days. Relief pitchers can’t throw three consecutive days, and can’t pitch back-to-back games if they throw 30 or more pitches in the first appearance. On top of these restrictions, teams are sending their players to the tournament with mandated handle-with-care pitch limits.

United States starter Drew Smyly was creating a touchstone WBC moment on Wednesday in the Yanks’ second-round opener against Venezuela. The electric lefty struck out six straight batters. In the middle of the streak, he left the game after 4⅔ innings. MLB Network announcers said it was because he had reached his “personal pitch count’’ after throwing 61 pitches.

You can’t take this event seriously when stuff like that happens. A later start would allow greater pitch limits and could lead to more big-name American players participating. The WBC reflects American apathy more than American exceptionalism right now.

Red Sox closer Craig Kimbrel, part of the 2013 American WBC team, said the tournament’s timing is why the United States isn’t getting the same level of commitment from its best players as other WBC entries.

“All I can really say on that is timing,’’ said Kimbrel. “You hear a lot of guys talking about if it was a different point of the year, but it all just comes down to timing,’’ said Kimbrel. “A lot of guys from the Dominican and Venezuela, they have winter ball, and they get to participate in that before they come to spring training. That is definitely a great tool for them.’’

Changing the timing of the tournament won’t change another major WBC problem — MLB teams passive-aggressively dissing it and discouraging participation in it.

The Red Sox rebuffed a request for lefthanded starter Eduardo Rodriguez, who tweaked his knee in winter ball, to join Venezuela for the second round. They also shielded Hanley Ramirez from playing for the Dominican Republic. The Mets are griping about the way closer Jeurys Familia has been used on the Dominican team. Padres manager Andy Green expressed frustration that third baseman Yangervis Solarte had been languishing on the Venezuela bench and was not getting the spring at-bats he would’ve been getting with the Padres.

MLB also needs to make sure the tournament is properly organized. The pool play in Mexico was a disaster. There was an altercation in the stands involving family members of the Puerto Rican team, leading Yadier Molina to excoriate MLB on his Instagram account for a lack of security. Former Red Sox first baseman Adrian Gonzalez ripped the WBC after there was confusion over a convoluted three-way tiebreaker between Venezuela, Mexico, and Italy that saw Gonzalez’s Mexican team eliminated.

“They’re trying to become the World Cup, but they’re not even close to being the Little League World Series,’’ said Gonzalez.

Perhaps it just wasn’t part of God’s plan for Mexico to advance, Adrian, like the 2011 Red Sox.

These flaws are fixable, and both television ratings and attendance have increased for the tournament. Pool play attendance increased 34 percent from 2013, according to MLB. Pool C, held at Marlins Park in Miami, drew a total of 163,878 fans in six games, the highest first-round total for a US pool venue in WBC history and an average of 27,313 fans per game.

Timing is everything in life. The WBC needs to change its timing to grow into a marquee event, and MLB needs to get with the times with the All-Star Game.

Christopher L. Gasper is a Globe columnist.