{"id":223307,"date":"2026-03-17T06:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T06:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/223307\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T06:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T06:17:08","slug":"japan-manager-hirokazu-ibata-to-step-down-after-wbc-loss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/223307\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan manager Hirokazu Ibata to step down after WBC loss"},"content":{"rendered":"

TOKYO — National team baseball manager Hirokazu Ibata has said he will step down following Japan’s loss to Venezuela<\/a> 8-5 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

Japan is the defending champion and had 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 play in Tokyo in Pool C — victories over Taiwan, South Korea, Australia and the Czech Republic — before being eliminated by Venezuela in the loss 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> andTomoyuki Sugano<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO — National team baseball manager Hirokazu Ibata has said he will step down following Japan’s loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223308,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[101850,750,112,114,113,53,1334,100,7806,70458,7804],"class_list":["post-223307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fresno","tag-101850","tag-espn","tag-fresno","tag-fresno-headlines","tag-fresno-news","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-news","tag-ohtani-shohei","tag-world-baseball-classic","tag-yamamoto-yoshinobu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223307"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223307\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}