LOS ANGELES — World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto plans to pitch for Team Japan in the 2026 World Baseball Classic, while Roki Sasaki is not expected to participate, according to reports from Japanese publications.
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani already announced on his Instagram account that he plans to play for Japan (the defending champion) in the WBC this spring.
The Dodgers met with Team Japan manager Hirokazu Ibata during the Winter Meetings in Orlando earlier this week. But Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes would not confirm the Yamamoto or Sasaki decisions.
“There’s still conversations with Major League Baseball and the (players’ union) and there’s all these formalities we have to go through before anything is official,” Gomes said on Friday. “So the reports that I’ve heard about feel premature.”
Among those formalities is insurance.
MLB teams get insurance on any of their players participating in the WBC. If players are injured during the WBC and miss time, their MLB team can be reimbursed for the player’s salary during the time he misses. The players’ union is involved to make sure the player continues to be paid.
Teams can sometimes have difficulty getting insurance on players with long injury histories. In 2023, veterans Miguel Cabrera and Clayton Kershaw ran into problems. In Cabrera’s case, the Detroit Tigers waived the insurance requirement for Cabrera, who was entering his final MLB season at age 39.
Kershaw expressed his desire to pitch for Team USA but did not after “complications” arose. Neither he nor the Dodgers have ever specified what those were, but Kershaw is believed to have been willing to pay for a personal insurance policy but the cost was prohibitive because of his age and injury history.
Dodgers reliever Brusdar Graterol was also interested in pitching for Venezuela in the 2023 tournament but backed out when he was unable to obtain insurance.
In addition, teams can step in and prevent players from participating if they have a recent injury. That would appear to apply to Sasaki, who missed most of the 2025 season with a shoulder problem.
In Yamamoto’s case, the Dodgers are likely willing to let him pitch for Team Japan but only if the two sides can agree on his workload.
“Obviously it’s something that they both (Yamamoto and Sasaki) are excited about potentially. Obviously the country of Japan is excited,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said earlier this week.
“But I would like to think that it’s going to be a dialogue as far as restrictions and limitations, in the sense of just trying to give them the opportunity but also understand they’ve come off some stuff, some long seasons.”
In making his announcement, Ohtani did not specify whether he would be participating as a two-way player for Team Japan. Roberts said he was “hoping he doesn’t” pitch in the WBC and only competes as a hitter. Gomes said that is still up for discussion as well.
“We still need to have conversations,” Gomes said. “It’s so early in the offseason. We’ll have additional conversations with that too.”
The WBC starts with pool play games on March 4 and runs through the championship game at LoanDepot Park in Miami on March 17. Dodgers catcher Will Smith has already committed to playing for Team USA, while first baseman Freddie Freeman is expected to play for Team Canada again. Outfielder Teoscar Hernandez has said he will not participate with the Dominican Republic team.
AloJapan.com