LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani will not pitch for Samurai Japan in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, adding that it was Ohtani’s decision. Ohtani will still serve as the designated hitter for his home country.
Asked if the team would have supported him had he decided to also pitch, Roberts said: “Absolutely.”
Ohtani made two starts for Japan in the 2023 WBC, then famously came out of the bullpen to close out a championship in the ninth inning of the finale. Another tear in his ulnar collateral ligament emerged late in the ensuing season, prompting Ohtani to spend all of 2024 — his first year the Dodgers — as a full-time DH.
Ohtani, 31, made a methodical return to pitching late in the 2025 season but had been fully stretched out as a starter by October and wound up making four starts in the playoffs. In his last, he recorded the first seven outs in Game 7 of the World Series despite being on only three days’ rest. Roberts said he “wasn’t surprised” Ohtani ultimately decided not to pitch in the international tournament, which takes place in the middle of March.
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“Understanding what he did last year, what he had to go through to then how best to prepare himself for ’26 to do both — it just seemed like the right decision,” Roberts said during the team’s annual fan event on Saturday. “So, I wasn’t surprised — and feel really good with that one.”
Speaking moments earlier, Ohtani was noncommittal about pitching in the WBC, saying he had to “see how my body feels, feel the progression and see what happens.” Ohtani was part of a star-studded rotation in the 2023 WBC, alongside Yu Darvish, Shota Imanaga and current teammates Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki. Of that group, only Yamamoto — who compiled 211 innings in 2025, including 2⅔ innings in World Series Game 7 on zero days’ rest — will return to pitch.
Sasaki told the team’s flagship radio station, AM 570, that the Dodgers asked him not to pitch in this year’s tournament, likely a byproduct of his uneven rookie season.
The 2026 season will constitute Ohtani’s return as a full-time two-way player, which hasn’t been the case in three years. Roberts said the team will not place a strict innings limit on him and expects him to be a fully stretched-out starter by the time the regular season begins, but the Dodgers will operate with a hybrid six-man rotation and will provide Ohtani with extra days off in between starts as often as possible.
“It’s been a great offseason,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “Mostly business as usual. I think the good thing is that I wasn’t hurt this year or had any injury, so a mostly normal offseason.”
