Dodgers outfielder Shohei Ohtani will play for Japan in the World Series, but will he play?
Shohei Ohtani will represent Team Japan again next year Classic baseball world.
However, it is still unclear whether he will participate in the international tournament or not.
on monday, Ohtani announced on Instagram He plans to compete in the WBC for the second time in his career.
At the 2023 WBC, he won the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award with a .435 batting average and 1.86 ERA, helping Japan win that year’s title. He punctuated the event with his memorable hit of Mike Trout on the final play of the championship game.
“I am happy to play for Japan again,” Ohtani wrote in Japanese on Monday.
The question now is whether Ohtani will participate in the event, which will be held in March, just five months after his heavy postseason workload during the Dodgers’ run to a second straight World Series title.
At this point, it appears that no decision has been made on this front.
After spending the first half of the 2025 season limited solely to designated hitting duties while completing his recovery from a 2023 Tommy John procedure, the 31-year-old Ohtani resumed his doubleheader role during the second half, starting 14 pitches for the Dodgers from June to September while increasing his workload one inning at a time.
By the postseason, he was all set to make a full start, and went on to throw 20 innings over four playoff appearances — including a 2⅓ appearance on short three-day rest in Game 7 of the World Series.
Often times, pitchers who are severely taxed during a deep playoff run will consider not participating in the WBC the following year due to the early ramp-up required for tournament pitching that occurs during spring training.
However, the WBC is of utmost importance in the Japanese baseball community. More important even than the World Series. Ohtani is the face of the prefecture’s famous Japanese Samurai team, which will attempt to win its fourth World Boxing Championship title.
Shohei Ohtani celebrates with his teammates after defeating Mike Trout to ensure Japan wins the World Baseball Classic over the United States in 2023.
(Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press)
Ohtani is expected to be a hit at the event, coming off a 55-homer season that helped him capture his third straight MVP award and the fourth of his MLB career.
But there’s no indication whether he’ll throw the ball, or whether that decision was made between him and the Dodgers (who can’t prevent Ohtani from participating in the event, but can ask him to either not throw or follow strict usage rules given he missed the first half of last season on the mound).
It is unlikely that a decision will be made until the tournament approaches.
The Dodgers’ other two Japanese pitchers, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Rocky Sasaki, face a similar dynamic leading up to next year’s World Series.
Yamamoto pitched in 30 games in the 2025 regular season, the most of his Major League Baseball career or his Japanese career, then threw 37⅓ more innings in six games during the playoffs — including back-to-back heroic victories in Games 6 and 7 of the World Series.
Sasaki missed most of his rookie season in the MLB with a shoulder injury, but returned late in the year and the team is effectively a closer in the playoffs. He is scheduled to return to the starting rotation next year.
Like Ohtani, both are key pieces in the Dodgers’ 2026 pitching plans, which, as manager Dave Roberts hinted during a promotional tour in Japan last week, could make the WBC something of a potential complication.
“We will support them,” Roberts told Japanese media. “But I think throwing the ball does a lot for the body and the arm. The rest will be good for next year, for our season. But we know how important the World Boxing Championships are for these individual players and for the country of Japan.”
The Dodgers could opt to hold Sasaki out of the World Series, given he spent most of last year on the 60-day injured list, but they have yet to give any indication as to whether they will do so.
The club cannot do the same with Yamamoto, but could still try to advocate for using him more conservatively in the tournament after a particularly tiring performance in October.
So far, at least, what is known is that Ohtani will participate in some capacity.
But whether he or his Japanese Dodgers teammates make the tournament will remain a subplot as the season progresses.