Shohei Ohtani will represent Team Japan again next year. World Baseball Classic.
However, it remains unclear whether he will take part in the international tournament.
On Monday Ohtani announced this on Instagram. he plans to compete in the WBC for the second time in his career.
At the 2023 WBC, he was the tournament MVP with a .435 batting average and 1.86 innings ERA, helping Japan capture the title that year. He marked this event with his Mike Trout's memorable strikeout for the finale in the championship game.
“I'm happy to play again representing Japan,” Otani wrote in Japanese on Monday.
The question now is whether Ohtani will play in the tournament in March, just five months before his heavy postseason workload during the Dodgers' run to victory. second consecutive World Series title.
At the moment, it appears that no decision has been made on this matter.
After spending the first half of the 2025 season limited to only certain hitting duties and completing his recovery from the 2023 Tommy John procedure, the 31-year-old Ohtani resumed his two-way role in the second half, making 14 pitching starts for the Dodgers from June through September while increasing his workload one inning at a time.
By the postseason, he was fully ready to make full starts and pitched 20⅓ innings in four playoff games, including 2⅓ innings on a shortened three-day rest in Game 7 of the World Series.
Often, pitchers who are taxed so heavily during a deep playoff run consider skipping the WBC tournament next year because the early scoring needed to qualify for the tournament occurs during spring training.
However, the WBC is of paramount importance in the Japanese baseball community; even more significant than the World Series. And Ohtani is the face of Japan's iconic Samurai team, which will be attempting to win its fourth WBC title.
Shohei Ohtani celebrates with his teammates after beating Mike Trout to ensure Japan wins the 2023 World Cup Baseball Championship over the United States.
(Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press)
Ohtani is expected to have success in this tournament, having put together a career-high 55-player season that helped him earn his third MVP award in a row and the fourth of his MLB career.
But there is no indication yet 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 may ask him to either not pitch or follow strict usage guidelines given that he missed the first half of last season on the mound).
It is unlikely that a decision will be made closer to the tournament.
Two other Japanese Dodgers pitchers Yoshinobu Yamamoto And Rocky Sasakiwill face similar dynamics ahead of next year's WBC.
Yamamoto made 30 regular-season starts in 2025, most of his career in MLB or Japan, and then tossed another 37⅓ innings in six playoff appearances, 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 actually became the team's closer in the playoffs. He plans to return to the starting rotation next year.
Like Ohtani, they are both key cogs in the Dodgers' 2026 pitching plans, which, as manager Dave Roberts mentioned during a promotional tour of Japan last week could be a potential complication for the WBC.
“We will support them,” Roberts told Japanese media. “But I think the serve has a lot to do with the body, with the arm. The rest will be useful 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 block Sasaki from participating in the WBC after he spent most of last year on the 60-day injured list, but have given no indication as to whether they will do so.
The club can't do the same with Yamamoto, but could still try to push for him to be used more conservatively in the tournament given his particularly taxing performance in October.
At least for now, it is known that Ohtani will be involved in some capacity.
But whether he or his Japanese Dodgers teammates will participate in the tournament will remain a secondary question as the offseason progresses.
