Opening Day 2025: A Look at Japanese Major League Baseball Players

Ready to Go in 2025

The 2025 Major League Baseball season features 13 Japanese players. Ahead of the official Opening Day on March 27, Ohtani Shōhei and the World Series champions Los Angeles Dodgers will be in Tokyo for a two-game series against the Chicago Cubs on March 18 and 19. Japanese fans will be eager to see the MVP in action with teammate Yamamoto Yoshinobu, as well as Chicago’s Imanaga Shōta and Suzuki Seiya.

As the Major Leagues prepare to move into the regular season, the Dodgers have also called up Sasaki Rōki, their third Japanese piching phenom. He is expected to start in the second game of the season.

American League

National League

(Photo of Senga Kōdai ©︎ IMAGN Images/Reuters Connect; all other photos © USA Today Sports/Reuters Connect)

All eyes will be on Ohtani, who is coming off his record 50-50 season as the Dodgers’ designated hitter and will be looking to brandish his talents on the mound again in 2025. The star has made good progress after undergoing a procedure on his left shoulder in November and is eager to resume his tenure as the MLB’s only two-way player.

A record three Japanese pitchers are expected to start for their teams on Opening Day. Yamamoto of the Dodgers and Imanaga of the Cubs are the likely starters in game one of the Tokyo series, and Kikuchi Yūsei is slated to kick off the season, his seventh in the majors, pitching for the Los Angeles Angels against the Chicago White Sox.

Fitting his performance last year, Ohtani leads the 2025 ranking of the US television sports channel MLB Network’s top 100 players list, which it releases each year ahead of the regular season. He is joined by Yamamoto at sixty-third, Imanaga at sixty-fourth, and Suzuki at seventy-third. Pitcher Sasaki Rōki, who signed a minor-league contract with the Dodgers and has been called up to start in the second game of the regular season after two scoreless outings in preseason play, rounds out the list at number 100.

(Originally published in Japanese. Banner photo: Ohtani Shōhei of the Los Angeles Dodgers warms up during spring training in Phoenix, Arizona, on February 25, 2025. © USA Today Sports/Reuters Connect.)