{"id":505348,"date":"2025-11-24T22:38:44","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/?post_type=news&#038;p=505348"},"modified":"2025-11-24T22:39:00","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T02:39:00","slug":"ohtani-to-compete-for-japan-in-world-baseball-classic","status":"publish","type":"news","link":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/news\/ohtani-to-compete-for-japan-in-world-baseball-classic\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohtani to compete for Japan in World Baseball Classic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>LA Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani will be part of Team Japan in the 2026 World Baseball Classic, he revealed today.<\/p>\n<p>His nation will try to repeat after triumphing in the 2023 Classic. Shohei was the MVP of the competition back then and memorably struck out ex-teammate Mike Trout for the final out of the deciding match vs. the USA.<\/p>\n<p>The Japanese superstar, who returned to the mound in the last campaign after not pitching for nearly 2 years after a 2<sup>nd<\/sup> repair of his ulnar collateral ligament. It is unclear yet if he will be pitching for Team Japan at the tournament.<\/p>\n<p>The WBC starts March 5<sup>th<\/sup>, with his nation in Group C alongside Australia, South Korea, Czechia, and Chinese Taipei. The other great favorite \u2013 the USA \u2013 will be in Group B.<\/p>\n<p>For the United States team, already stars like Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh, and Paul Skenes confirmed that they would be playing at the Classic.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Shohei Ohtani just posted a \u201cThank You, Fans\u201d graphic and seemingly confirmed he plans to play for Samurai Japan in the 2026 World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHonored to play and represent Japan again.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/BKwZ4o6DCV\" target=\"_blank\">pic.twitter.com\/BKwZ4o6DCV<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Dodgers Nation (@DodgersNation) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DodgersNation\/status\/1993127201152418160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">November 25, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Ohtani is coming off a 2<sup>nd<\/sup> consecutive World Series title with the Dodgers and won his 4<sup>th<\/sup> MVP award at the beginning of November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LA Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani will be part of Team Japan in the 2026 World Baseball Classic, he revealed today. His nation will [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4225,"featured_media":505349,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false},"tags":[17101,17254],"news_category":[16708,16715],"gn_keywords":[18925,18481],"acf":{"news_source":"","link_picture":"","announce":"Shohei will be part of his national team for the upcoming tournament.","video":[]},"rank_math_focus_keyword":"","rank_math_description":"","rank_math_title":"","rank_math_robots":"","rank_math_canonical_url":"","rank_math_facebook_title":"","rank_math_facebook_description":"","rank_math_facebook_image":"","rank_math_twitter_title":"","rank_math_twitter_description":"","rank_math_twitter_image":"","rank_math_snippet_shortcode":"","rank_math_primary_category":"","rankmath_seo":{"focus_keyword":"","description":"","title":"","canonical_url":"","robots":"","facebook":{"title":"","description":"","image":""},"twitter":{"title":"","description":"","image":""}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/505348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4225"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505348"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/505348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":505351,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/505348\/revisions\/505351"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505348"},{"taxonomy":"news_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news_category?post=505348"},{"taxonomy":"gn_keywords","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/7sport.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gn_keywords?post=505348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}