{"id":545602,"date":"2026-03-17T06:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T06:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/545602\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T06:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T06:12:09","slug":"japan-manager-hirokazu-ibata-to-step-down-after-wbc-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/545602\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan manager Hirokazu Ibata to step down after WBC loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOKYO — National team baseball manager Hirokazu Ibata said he will step down after Japan’s 8-5 loss to Venezuela<\/a> in Miami in the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n

The newspaper Sports Hochi reported Ibata saying it was his “intention to resign.”<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

1 Related<\/p>\n

Japan is the defending champion and has won the event three times. It marked Japan’s first failure to reach the WBC semifinals despite a team stacked with major league talent, including Shohei Ohtani.<\/a><\/p>\n

“The result is everything,” Sports Hochi reported Ibata saying. “Although we lost this time, I hope Japan will grow stronger and win next time.”<\/p>\n

Japan was 4-0 in Tokyo in Pool C — victories over Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and the Czech Republic — before being eliminated by Venezuela in Miami.<\/p>\n

The MLB players on the Japan team included: Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a>, Seiya Suzuki<\/a>, Yusei Kikuchi<\/a>, Masataka Yoshida<\/a>, Munetaka Murakami<\/a>, Kazuma Okamoto<\/a> and Tomoyuki Sugano<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO — National team baseball manager Hirokazu Ibata said he will step down after Japan’s 8-5 loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-545602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545602","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=545602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}