Shohei Ohtani will represent Team Japan again next year World Baseball Classic.
However, it remains to be seen whether or not he will participate in the international tournament.
Monday, Ohtani announced on Instagram he plans to compete in the WBC for the second time in his career.
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In the 2023 WBC, he won the tournament MVP with a .435 batting average and 1.86 ERA, helping Japan win the title that year. He punctuated the event with his memorable withdrawal of Mike Trout for the final takedown of the championship match.
“I’m happy to play representing Japan again,” Ohtani wrote in Japanese on Monday.
The question now is whether Ohtani will participate in the event, which will take place in March, just five months after his heavy postseason workload during the Dodgers’ run to a second consecutive World Series title.
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At this stage, no decision appears to have been made on this matter.
After spending the first half of the 2025 season limited only to designated hitting duties while completing his recovery from a Tommy John procedure in 2023, Ohtani, 31, resumed his two-way role during the second half, making 14 starts for the Dodgers from June to September while increasing his workload one inning at a time.
In the postseason, he was fully prepared for full starts and went on to pitch 20⅓ innings in four postseason outings – including a 2⅓ inning appearance on a shortened three-day rest. Game 7 of the World Series.
Often, pitchers who are in high demand during a deep postseason will consider not participating in a WBC the following year due to the early ramp-up required to throw the tournament that takes place during spring training.
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However, the WBC holds supreme importance in the Japanese baseball community; even more important than the World Series. And Ohtani is the face of the country’s iconic Samurai Japan national team, which will attempt to win its fourth WBC title.
Shohei Ohtani celebrates with his teammates after striking out Mike Trout to secure Japan’s World Baseball Championship victory over the United States in 2023. (Wilfredo Lee / Associated Press)
Ohtani is expected to do well in this event, coming off a career-high 55 home run season that helped him win a third straight MVP award and the fourth of his MLB career.
But there is no indication whether he will pitch, or whether such a decision has been made between him and the Dodgers (who cannot prevent Ohtani from participating in the event, but could ask him not to pitch or follow strict usage rules given that he missed the first half of last season on the mound).
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A decision is unlikely to be made before the start of the tournament.
The Dodgers’ other two Japanese pitchers, Yoshinobu Yamamoto And Roki Sasakiface similar dynamics ahead of next year’s WBC.
Yamamoto made 30 starts during the 2025 regular season, the majority of his career in MLB or Japan, then pitched 37⅓ extra innings in six outings during the postseason — including his back-to-back heroics in Games 6 and 7 of the World Series.
Sasaki missed most of his rookie MLB season with a shoulder injury, but returned late in the year and became the team’s de facto playoff closer. Next year, he should return to the starting rotation.
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Like Ohtani, they are both key cogs in the Dodgers’ 2026 pitching plans, which, as directorDave Roberts mentioned during a promotional tour in Japan last week, could make the WBC a potential complication.
“We will support them,” Roberts told Japanese media. “But I think throwing is a lot on the body, the arm. The rest will be beneficial for next year, for our season. But we understand how important the WBC is for these individual players and for the country of Japan.”
The Dodgers could choose to block Sasaki’s participation in the WBC, since he spent much of last year on the 60-day injured list, but have not yet indicated whether they would do so.
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The club can’t do the same with Yamamoto, but could still try to argue for him to be used more conservatively in the tournament, after his particularly heavy performance in October.
For now, what we know is that Ohtani will participate in some capacity.
But whether he, or his Japanese Dodgers teammates, will compete in the tournament will remain a subplot as the offseason progresses.
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This story was originally published in Los Angeles Times.
