{"id":306845,"date":"2025-11-25T02:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/306845\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T02:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:51:07","slug":"shohei-ohtani-to-play-for-japan-in-world-baseball-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/306845\/","title":{"rendered":"Shohei Ohtani to play for Japan in World Baseball Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-clubhouse-guid=\"fb7cf413-5156-9fc2-abe0-2273b89f70db\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com.au\/mlb\/team\/_\/name\/lad\/los-angeles-dodgers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> superstar <a data-player-guid=\"04a76996-4a5c-456d-8022-a9d45e3ff933\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/39832\/shohei-ohtani\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Shohei Ohtani<\/a> will play for Team Japan in the 2026 World Baseball Classic, he announced on social media Monday night.<\/p>\n<p>Japan will be looking to repeat after winning gold in the 2023 Classic. Ohtani was named the tournament&#8217;s MVP and memorably struck out former teammate <a data-player-guid=\"e1be67bf-3688-8bd6-9bd6-c01d0e34e119\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/30836\/mike-trout\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Trout<\/a> for the final out of the deciding game against Team USA.<\/p>\n<p>Ohtani, who returned to the mound this past season after not pitching for nearly two years following a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament. He did not say in his post Monday whether he would be pitching for Japan.<\/p>\n<p>The WBC begins March 5, with Japan in Pool C, along with Australia, South Korea, Czechia and Chinese Taipei. Team USA will be in Pool B.<\/p>\n<p>Team USA has already received commitments from stars <a data-player-guid=\"e3e39e69-2861-f5b5-49be-b0880534c802\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/33192\/aaron-judge\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aaron Judge<\/a>, <a data-player-guid=\"6c27dcb5-a741-d526-b5ac-f3988e288a70\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/41292\/cal-raleigh\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cal Raleigh<\/a> and <a data-player-guid=\"cdfd69c1-1b9b-30fe-acf4-aad457b0850e\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/mlb\/player\/_\/id\/4719507\/paul-skenes\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Skenes<\/a>, among others.<\/p>\n<p>Ohtani is coming off a second straight World Series title with the Dodgers and was awarded his fourth MVP award earlier this month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani will play for Team Japan in the 2026 World Baseball Classic, he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-306845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}