Alex Rodriguez said it all after Japan scored two runs in the ninth inning to defeat Mexico, 6-5, in Monday night’s World Baseball Classic semifinal at Miami’s LoanDepot Park.
“Major League Baseball has hit the lottery with this tournament,” the former New York Yankees third baseman said to open the FS1 postgame show.
Tuesday night’s finale is everything the global baseball tournament could have asked for: Team USA against Japan. Mike Trout against Shohei Ohtani, his Los Angeles Angels teammate. The two teams are a combined 11-1 in the tournament, Japan 6-0, the U.S. 5-1.
A sellout crowd of 36,000 will be at a game that’s expected to generate the widest television audience in recent baseball history.
“[The final] highlights the two best players in the game,” Mike Scioscia, who managed both Trout and Ohtani with the Angels, said in a telephone interview. “And I think it’s terrific for baseball. It might be more interesting if Shohei was pitching against Mike. But you have two teams that are terrific playing in the final game.”
In a late switch, Japan will have left-hander Shota Imanaga start instead of MLB veteran Yu Darvish, possibly against Merrill Kelly for the U.S., who’ll be backed up by starters Kyle Freeland, Nick Martinez and a rested bullpen. But U.S. manager Mark DeRosa hadn’t formally made that decision.
Just as he did Monday night, Ohtani will bat third in the lineup as Japan’s designated hitter, but will he be available at some point as a reliever? Japanese skipper Hideki Kuriyama, who managed Ohtani when he played for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, wouldn’t discount it, but he didn’t exactly endorse the concept, either.
“I won’t say it’s a zero, but of course this is something that Shohei has not done for five years, since he was playing for the Fighters,” Kuriyama said. “I’ve always measured him and how much he can play and when I do I have to stop him. So, I will check with his condition and there won’t be a zero, but basically just the idea is we’re not going to push the pitchers that much.”
Ohtani wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of pitching, either.
“I’ll definitely be prepared to pitch whenever,” he said through his interpreter. “But before that I’m going to have to hit. So, I want to make sure I put some runs on the board before I get to pitch.”
Is Ohtani’s baseball’s best player? He looked all of that and more leading off the ninth inning with Japan trailing Mexico, 5-4. On the first pitch from reliever Giovanny Gallegos, he lined a double into the right-center field gap.
As he rumbled into second, Ohtani stomped on the base and screamed like the Hulk at the Japanese dugout, as the sellout crowd of 35,933 roared in anticipation. A walk put runners on first and second, and when Japan’s star slugger Munetaka Murakami doubled off the center field fence, Ohtani led the charge home to end the game.
Ohtani had told his teammates he had made up his mind he was going to get on base. “I said, ‘Man, I wish I could just make up my mind to get on base in that situation, too,’” Lars Nootbaar, the first American with Japanese lineage to ever start for the Japan team, said.
“Anytime you see Shohei show emotion like that you know it’s real,” Nootbaar, a St. Louis Cardinals outfielder, added. “When a quiet guy with a cool demeanor gets fired up, it lights a fire under everybody.”
Murakami, 22, just signed a contract with the Yakult Swallows that will allow him to join an MLB team in 2025 and make big money. He’s the two-time Central League MVP, who just hit 56 homers to break Saduhara Oh’s Japanese record. Ohtani, 28, is a free agent at the end of this MLB season, and the sky is the limit for his contract.
Trout gives Ohtani a run as baseball’s top offensive player. Team USA’s captain has helped pace an offense that’s racked up 23 runs and 29 hits with five homers during knockout-round wins over Venezuela and Cuba.
Trea Turner has led the barrage, hitting three of the five homers, including an eighth-inning grand slam which drove the U.S. from behind to defeat Venezuela.
Unlike Ohtani, who won a Japan league championship in 2016, this is the closest Trout has come to a title of any kind. Though he’s won the American League MVP three times in his 12 seasons with the Angels, he’s never won a playoff game. He played in three during a 2014 AL Division Series against Kansas City, but none since.
Needless to say, he and Ohtani, who won the 2021 AL MVP for his hitting and pitching prowess, have never played in a postseason game together.
Now it’s Trout against Ohtani on the world stage.
“I think this is huge for Mike. He’s having a blast,” Scioscia said. “He’s come up with big hits. He’s playing with a great group of guys. He’s going to remember this for the rest of his life. Hopefully the U.S. can win and pull off that goal.”
Whether it’s in the Olympics or the WBC, Japan is always a formidable opponent for the U.S., which is defending its 2017 WBC title.
Japan has dominated in the WBC. This is the team’s third time to the finals, winning the championship in 2006 and 2009, dropping the semifinals in 2013 and 2017. Japan lost 2-1 to the U.S. in 2017.
In the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Scioscia managed a team of Major League retreads and minor leaguers to a 2021 silver medal. In the gold-medal game, Team USA played a Japanese team much like this one in the WBC—made up of members from their own Nippon Professional Baseball League. Because of restrictions on MLB players, Ohtani, of course, couldn’t play.
Japan ran through the tournament, defeating the U.S. twice—once during the knockout stage and again in the gold medal game. Just like his game-winning hit Monday night against Mexico, Murakami hit a solo homer, giving Japan the lead for good in that game.
“They play a brand of baseball that is very fundamentally sound,” Scioscia said. “I think it carries over to the players who come over and play in our country. These guys are terrific players. And Shohei is a terrific player.”
Trout vs. Ohtani. The magnifying glass will be on both players and their teams Tuesday night as they vie for the WBC title.
