{"id":448381,"date":"2026-02-04T11:09:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T11:09:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/448381\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T11:09:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T11:09:07","slug":"red-sox-slugger-yoshida-joins-japans-wbc-roster-as-final-member","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/448381\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Sox slugger Yoshida joins Japan&#8217;s WBC roster as final member"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>TOKYO &#8211; Boston Red Sox slugger Masataka Yoshida will join defending champion Japan&#8217;s roster for the upcoming World Baseball Classic, filling the final spot on Samurai Japan, the national team&#8217;s management body said Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Attention had focused on the final roster spot after manager Hirokazu Ibata named 29 of a maximum 30 players. The team is headlined by Los Angeles Dodgers two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani.<\/p>\n<p>The 32-year-old left-handed hitter was part of Japan&#8217;s title-winning squad at the previous WBC in 2023.<\/p>\n<p>A record nine MLB-based players were selected, including Dodgers ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Chicago Cubs slugger Seiya Suzuki.<\/p>\n<p>Samurai Japan, aiming to win a record-extending fourth WBC crown, will head into camp in the southwestern Japan city of Miyazaki from Feb. 14.<\/p>\n<p>WBC opens March 5, with Japan beginning its campaign the following day against Pool C opponent Taiwan at Tokyo Dome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO &#8211; Boston Red Sox slugger Masataka Yoshida will join defending champion Japan&#8217;s roster for the upcoming World&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448382,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-448381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448381\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448382"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}