LOS ANGELES — Two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani will not pitch in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts announced on Saturday at DodgerFest. As he looks to help Samurai Japan defend its title, Ohtani will be used only as a hitter.
While Ohtani won’t pitch in the Classic, he’s confident that he’ll be able to be in the rotation for the entire regular season as the Dodgers bid for a three-peat.
“It’s been a great offseason. Mostly business as usual,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “I think the good thing is that I wasn’t hurt this year or had any injury. … I’m very healthy. Glad that I am. The only wrinkle is going to be the World Baseball Classic, so I’m wrapping up [the offseason] a little early.”
The Dodgers are coming off consecutive abridged offseasons, starting the regular season abroad and playing through the World Series in both 2024 and ’25. While they have been willing to allow their players to participate in the Classic, they were hopeful that Ohtani would not pitch for Japan so that he could be at his best on both sides of the ball in big league play.
“I wasn’t surprised. I can’t even say I was relieved,” Roberts said. “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.”
Also participating in the Classic is Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who led the 2025 Dodgers with 173 2/3 innings and tacked on another 37 1/3 in the postseason. He will represent Japan alongside Ohtani. Will Smith is catching for Team USA, where he’ll be teammates with the recently retired Clayton Kershaw. Hyeseong Kim will play for South Korea.
Ohtani returned to pitching last June following a nearly 22-month absence from the big league mound. Coming off a second major surgery on his right elbow in September 2023, Ohtani went 1-1 with a 2.87 ERA in 14 starts, striking out 62 in 47 innings.
Because Ohtani was working his way back to the mound in addition to his daily duties as the Dodgers’ DH, he chose to essentially complete his rehab at the big league level, building up an inning at a time over the last few months of the season. In the postseason, the Dodgers loosened the reins and used him as a typical starter, and that should be the case going forward.
That said, the Dodgers are being mindful of how to manage Ohtani’s two-way workload. They already have the means to deploy a six-man rotation, which gives every starter some extra rest, but they are also prepared to be flexible and give Ohtani more days between starts when he needs it.
“I think there’s certainly going to be extra time,” Roberts said. “It’s not a five-day, six-day rotation. There’s going to be rest in between, but outside of that, it’s not going to be the two-inning, three-inning governor. I think he’s going to be used as a normal pitcher.”
