{"id":541733,"date":"2026-03-17T06:12:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T06:12:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541733\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T06:12:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T06:12:10","slug":"japan-manager-hirokazu-ibata-stepping-down-after-elimination-in-wbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/541733\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan manager Hirokazu Ibata stepping down after elimination in WBC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph\">TOKYO (AP) \u2014 National team baseball manager Hirokazu Ibata has said he will step down following Japan&#8217;s loss to Venezuela 8-5 in Miami in the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The newspaper Sports Hochi reported Ibata saying it was his \u201cintention to resign.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Japan is the defending champion and had won the event three times. It marked Japan&#8217;s first failure to reach the WBC semifinals despite a team stacked with major league talent including Shohei Ohtani.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">\u201cThe result is everything,\u201d Sports Hochi reported Ibata saying. \u201cAlthough we lost this time, I hope Japan will grow stronger and win next time.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">Japan was 4-0 in play in Tokyo in Pool C \u2014 victories over Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and the Czech Republic \u2014 before being eliminated by Venezuela in the loss in Miami.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The MLB players on the Japan team included: Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Seiya Suzuki, Yusei Kikuchi, Masataka Yoshida, Munetaka Murakami, Kazuma Okamoto and Tomoyuki Sugano.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">___<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph\">The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO (AP) \u2014 National team baseball manager Hirokazu Ibata has said he will step down following Japan&#8217;s loss&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541734,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-541733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541733","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=541733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541733\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}