{"id":524000,"date":"2026-03-09T06:16:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T06:16:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/524000\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T06:16:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T06:16:11","slug":"yoshinobu-yamamoto-now-2nd-most-followed-active-mlb-player-on-instagram","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/524000\/","title":{"rendered":"Yoshinobu Yamamoto Now 2nd Most Followed Active MLB Player on Instagram"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone knows the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a> have arguably the most popular baseball<\/a> player of all time, with Japan<\/a>‘s Shohei Ohtani.<\/p>\n

If you go anywhere in Japan, even the outskirts with no gigantic stores, you’ll still see Ohtani’s face on a vending machine or a bottle of tea.<\/p>\n

Ohtani has 10.5 million Instagram followers, by far the most of any active or retired MLB<\/a> player.<\/p>\n

On Sunday, though, one of his close friends and teammates on the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Samurai Japan joined him at the top of the social media mountain.<\/p>\n

Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the hero of the most recent World Series by winning back-to-back games to capture the title for L.A., made history of his own.<\/p>\n

After the 2025 postseason, Yamamoto’s Instagram numbers soared, with hundreds of thousands of people following his main character story during the World Series.<\/p>\n

More news: Junior Caminero Accused of \u2018Disrespecting\u2019 Baseball After Viral Celebration<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

More news: Fox Broadcaster Bombarded After \u2018Worst\u2019 Walk-Off Call in Baseball History<\/a><\/p>\n

The surge of new fans pushed him over two million and into third place among active players in the MLB, topping the likes of Aaron Judge and Fernando Tatis Jr.<\/p>\n

The only active player aside from Ohtani that Yamamoto didn’t pass was another of Ohtani’s former teammates, Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels.<\/p>\n

But after returning to Tokyo to pitch for the Samurai Japan in the World Baseball Classic, Yamamoto finally eclipsed Trout, reaching over 2.3 million followers while Trout sits at 2.2 million.<\/p>\n

Although only superficial, it’s a statement on Yamamoto’s popularity on his own without Ohtani, as he’s grown into his own stardom with his dominating pitching performances in 2025.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers have another player in the upper echelons at the WBC, Puerto Rico’s Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez, who is at 1.5 million and growing. Although not playing in the tournament because he’s recovering from an offseason surgery, the Dodgers’ utility man is also climbing up the social media rankings.<\/p>\n

For Angels fans, it’s another thing that the Dodgers have taken from them. They at least have some solace by sweeping the Dodgers twice in 2025.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everyone knows the Los Angeles Dodgers have arguably the most popular baseball player of all time, with Japan‘s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[3307,49,48,511,2454,462,82,29475],"class_list":["post-524000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dodgers","tag-japan","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-wbc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}