Shohei Ohtani will not pitch in World Baseball Classic for Japan
The 2023 World Baseball Classic ended with a matchup between then-Angels teammates, Shohei Ohtani on the mound against Mike Trout. In a showdown between two MVPs, Ohtani struck out Trout on a 3-2 slider, giving Japan its third WBC championship.
There will not be similar dramatics for this edition. During DodgersFest on Saturday, manager Dave Roberts cleared up one key question heading into spring training and the tournament.
“[Ohtani’s] not gonna pitch in the WBC, but he will be ramping up his arm to get ready for the season,” he said, adding that the player made the call.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Roberts said. “I can’t even say I was relieved. Understanding what he did last year, understanding what he had to go through, to then how best to prepare himself for ’26 to do both, it just seemed like the right decision.”
Ohtani said in November he would participate in the WBC but did not signal at the time whether he would pitch. When Team Japan’s roster was announced Monday, manager Hirokazu Ibata did not say if Ohtani would pitch, only saying they would get a better sense in spring training.
While speaking with reporters before Roberts, Ohtani said he wasn’t sure if he would pitch during the tournament.
“In terms of the World Baseball Classic, I just have to see how my body feels, continue to feel the progression and see what happens so I’m gonna be fully prepared as a DH,” he said.
The expectation going into the season had been he would be able to pitch without restrictions from the start for the Dodgers.
“I’m not going to manage him differently as far as each outing,” Roberts said. “There’s certainly going to be extra time, it’s not a five-day, six-day rotation. So there’s going to be rest in between. But outside of that, it’s not going to be the two-inning, three-inning [start], he’s just going to be used as a normal pitcher.”
In the 2023 WBC, Ohtani won tournament most valuable player with a .435 batting average and 1.86 ERA, helping Japan to the title. Five months later, Ohtani was pulled from a start at Angel Stadium against the Cincinnati Reds for what ultimately was revealed to be a torn UCL.
Ohtani had his second career Tommy John surgery in September and did not return to pitching until last June with the Dodgers.
During his first year on the mound for the Dodgers, Ohtani finished the regular season with a 2.87 ERA in 47 innings. In the playoffs, Ohtani posted a 4.43 earned run average in 20.1 innings over four starts — including one in Game 4 of the NLCS in which he struck out 10 batters while hitting three home runs, a performance Roberts called “probably the greatest postseason performance of all time” and earned him the series MVP.
MLB players like Ohtani and Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto are expected to join Team Japan for exhibition games on March 2. Japan will open WBC play on March 6 against Taiwan.
Dodgers right-hander Roki Sasaki, who will be returning to the starting rotation after missing most of last year’s regular season because of a shoulder injury, said on Saturday that the Dodgers made him unavailable for the WBC. Sasaki was on Team Japan in 2023, starting two games — including a dramatic semifinal win over Mexico.