TOKYO — Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts is still struggling to recover from an illness, with manager Dave Roberts pessimistic that the eight-time All-Star will be ready for opening day against the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday in Japan.
Betts was able to go through a light workout on Sunday, but became tired quickly.
“Really showed some fatigue, understandably so,” Roberts said. “We’ll see how he comes in tomorrow. He should be here for the workout. We’ll try to do a little more tomorrow."
Roberts said Saturday that Betts started suffering from flu-like symptoms in Arizona, the day before the team left for Japan. He still made the long plane trip, but hasn't recovered as quickly as hoped.
Roberts said Betts will need to show substantial improvement on Monday to play against the Cubs.
“To be able to go through an entire workout and not feel that same fatigue would give us a chance,” Roberts said. “But anything outside of that, I just don't think our training staff would feel good about that.”
Betts hasn't taken live at-bats in nearly a week.
“We’re really trying to be mindful of not just opening day,” Roberts said. “Not putting him in harm’s way. ... We don’t want to put him in position where he could get hurt.”
Perron has played 28 games this season. During his first 12 games, he didn’t record a single point. He has been dealing with a few injuries this season and health concerns surrounding his newest child, born at the end of October 2024.
Things are going great for Perron now, particularly on the ice.
Over his last six games, he has one of the best stat lines on the Ottawa Senators. Perron has recorded three goals and two assists, for five points. He’s also recorded 11 hits while averaging 14:40 of ice time per game.
The only Senators with more points in that time are Jake Sanderson, Drake Batherson, and Brady Tkachuk.
In Saturday’s game against the Toronto Maple Leafs, he skated on a line with Dylan Cousins and Batherson. Perron scored his fifth goal of the season at 12:16 of the second period to tie the game 2-2.
Perron is heating up at the right time, which should make Senators fans happy. The Senators hold the top Wild Card position. With the regulation win over Toronto, they are only four points behind them in the standings.
This has made the Wild Card picture more competitive in the Eastern Conference. With the Senators pulling ahead, it’s a dogfight for the final playoff position. The Red Wings are behind the New York Rangers by four points but also have a game in hand.
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The Mets continue their Grapefruit League action as they take on the Houston Astros at 1:10 p.m. on PIX11. Here's what to know about the game and how to watch...
Mets Notes
Tylor Megill made his most recent spring start against the Astros, pitching 4.0 scoreless innings while allowing just two hits on March 11
Brett Baty continues to make a strong push to be the starting second baseman now that Jeff McNeil is dealing with an oblique injury, posting an OPS of 1.100 with two homers and five RBI
Mark Vientos has also had a nice spring, hitting two homers with five RBI and an .800 OPS
Francisco Lindor has gotten off to a rough start at the plate, but he recorded his first extra base hit in his last start on March 14, hitting a double against St. Louis
ASTROS
METS
Jose Altuve, LF
Francisco Lindor, SS
Isaac Paredes, 3B
Starling Marte, DH
Yordan Alvarez, DH
Pete Alonso, 1B
Yainer Diaz, C
Mark Vientos, 3B
Cam Smith, RF
Brett Baty, 2B
Jeremy Pena, SS
Jose Siri, CF
Zach Dezenzo, 1B
Alexander Canario, LF
Chas McCormick, CF
Jose Azocar, RF
Mauricio Dubon, 2B
Hayden Senger, C
How can I watch Mets vs. Astros online?
To watch Mets games online via PIX11, you will need a subscription to a TV service provider and live in the New York City metro area. This will allow fans to watch the Mets on their computer, tablet or mobile phone browser.
ST. PAUL - Despite losing seven of its last ten games, the Earth isn't falling in the eyes of the Minnesota Wild. Even after one of the most sluggish games of the year, the Wild have to flush a 5-1 loss on home ice to the St. Louis Blues and move on.
It is a quick turnaround with the Los Angeles Kings in town on Monday and you know that Kevin Fiala will be hungry to pounce on the Wild right now, like Jordan Kyrou did on Saturday night.
"You gotta take the lessons quick out of it," Wild head coach John Hynes said. "You gotta get ready for the next game and get going. We got another, a day of rest tomorrow and then we got another big week coming. So, it’s a great time of year. It’s a highly competitive time of year. You can’t get too low when you lose, you can’t get too high when you win. And I think that’s the most important thing.
"Even for you. I think it’s ones where, we don’t, we lose a game and it’s like the earth’s not falling apart. Like we got a really good team. Tonight, we didn’t play our best. There’s a couple areas we could be better at. We will be better, and then we got another swing of games coming up this week. So, we’re excited for that."
One bad game happens. A stretch of two, three, or maybe four bad games happens. But in this current stretch for the Wild, it seems like it's just going to keep happening.
In their first four games of a seven game homestand, the Wild have scored a total of five goals. Two of them have been at 5-on-5 and one of the two was on the heels of the Blues' goaltender Joel Hofer making a poor decision behind the net.
“They scored goals. We don’t. Simple as that," Mats Zuccarello said. "That’s no secret that we’re struggling to score goals as of late. We got a find a way to do it. They score on their chances, and we don’t. They also pinned us in a couple times in our own zone, but I think we had some really good O-zone time, had some great chances, but that’s the difference. They score and we don’t.
"I mean, I can stand here and tell you but at the end of the day if we lose 5-1 at home, it’s not acceptable. Everyone in here knows it’s embarrassing for us to play like that, but what are we going to say? You gotta take it on the chin right now and it’s not good enough. There’s a hungry team coming in here Monday. We gotta be ready to compete and win hockey games.”
The Wild spent most of the first period in their own zone. They allowed chance after chance and were being dominated on possession time, it seemed.
Any chance the Wild would get in the offensive zone, they would fire it over the net. The Wild's fourth line created the most chances in the first period. They had four shot attempts and missed the net on every single one.
Yakov Trenin made two great moves to get to the net in the first period and missed twice. Deadline acquisition Justin Brazeau had a point-blank chance in the slot with no one on him and he fired it 10 feet to the right of Hofer.
To put salt in the wound, Marat Khusnutdinov, who the Wild traded for Brazeau, scored his second goal in as many games with the Boston Bruins.
The tide shifted in the second period though. Or so it seemed. Jake Neighbours opened the scoring in the second and Kyrou scored his first of three goals just over two minutes after Neighbours scored his 17th of the season.
"We just had more, you know? I think that goes back to us reacting like I said. It's like we were just kind of waiting for it and then in the second period, we took it to them and played our game," Jake Middleton said. "Even their goals. It wasn't like we were playing bad. Their goals were, they got lucky bounces. We didn't and that's just the way it's going. We definitely need more jam in our game, especially at this time of year. We were just kind of waiting, I thought."
Middleton got the Wild's lone goal thanks to a mistake by Hofer and the Blues. Kyrou then scored the next two goals to end it for the Wild.
The process to score a goal right now feels like a daunting task. With no Kirill Kaprizov or Joel Eriksson Ek, the Wild simply can't put the puck in the back of the net. It is an exhausting process.
"It's almost like, I agree with you, but it's almost like we're waiting for it. We're waiting for the next guy to do it, the guy beside you," Middleton said. "When we're not scoring as a team we all got to do it together, right? And that was kind of tonight. In recent games, the work ethic is there. But we gotta start stepping up as a team here and put the puck in the back of the net and just (start) playing harder."
In a time where the Wild are, and will continue to be, without Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek, they need guys to step up.
So that being said, it's not a good time for a guy like Matt Boldy to go into a slump. The 23-year-old forward has zero goals in his last ten games. He had three goals in two games before his ten game drought but also went scoreless in nine-straight before the two-game goal streak.
Marco Rossi hasn't scored in nine games. Gustav Nyquist, the Wild's other trade deadline acquisition, has zero goals in seven games with the Wild and zero in his last 17 games with the Nashville Predators and Wild. He has not scored since Jan 25.
He has one 5v5 goal in his last 55 games with six goals in that span. One of them was on the power play and four of them were empty net goals. His last 5v5 goal was Jan 25. His one before that was Oct 28.
Zuccarello has three goals in his last 18 games, Marcus Johansson has one goal in his last 18 games and Ryan Hartman has one goal in his last 14 games.
To Middleton's point, it seems like every Wild player is just sitting on the bench and looking at the guy beside them and hoping they will be the one to score.
That can't keep happening. It isn't like the Wild are a lock for the playoffs. They just dropped a game to the Blues who now entered the wildcard picture, and the schedule the rest of the month for the Wild doesn't get easier.
Nonetheless, the concern level has to be a little bit high. But as Hynes said, the earth isn't falling apart. They still are a good hockey team. This is still the same team that started the season 18-4-4 and was the best team in the league.
They had proven to be the best team in the league at times and stats back that up.
But it is also the team that is 11-14-1 since Jan 8. Which is 29th in the NHL. It's the same team that has scored the fewest goals in the NHL since Jan 8 but also the same team that allowed the fewest goals per game in the NHL through the first 28 games.
It's just a matter of what team will show up for the final 15 games of the season.
“Honestly, everyone wants to go and score goals and win hockey games. No difference in here," Zuccarello said. "Right now the puck doesn’t go in and it’s not a lack of trying or whatever but maybe when you get in a situation a little bit extra poise that you usually have when things go well is not there. Yeah, I don’t know. It’s frustrating for you guys to watch but imagine being out there and feeling the same way and you want to do but it’s no excuses. It’s not good enough. Next game we gotta compete and we gotta show up and be hungry. We gotta bounce back after this.”
SCOTTSDALE — After the third inning at the Giants’ minor league facility on Friday, bullpen coach Garvin Alston approached right-hander Landen Roupp in the dugout.
“If you have another inning like that, we’re going to put some runners on for you,” he said, laughing.
Against Colorado Rockies minor leaguers, Roupp was so dominant that getting on base wasn’t even a reasonable goal. Simply making contact against Roupp was difficult enough.
The 26-year-old pitched in a High-A game to get his pitch count up while Jordan Hicks faced the Milwaukee Brewers a few miles away, and in five one-hit innings, Roupp struck out 13. He started the afternoon with nine straight strikeouts, but didn’t realize what was going on at first.
“People were going wild. All the minor leaguers have to stay and watch us so some of my friends that I got drafted with were screaming after I struck someone out and I was like, ‘What are they doing?’ I guess it was because I struck out nine in a row,” Roupp said. “I noticed that and realized what was happening but during the moment I didn’t know that I was doing what I was doing. I was just locked in.”
The 13 strikeouts were a lifetime high at any level for Roupp, who twice struck out 12 in a game in college. He said he couldn’t remember ever getting more than six in a row.
The hitters were young and inexperienced, but often that’s a tougher test for big leaguers since hitters in the low minors view those matchups as opportunities to make a name for themselves and often are needlessly aggressive. Roupp didn’t give them a chance to chase base hits; the majority of his strikeouts came on three pitches and he needed just 66 — 51 of which were strikes — to get through his five innings.
A day later, Alston said Roupp’s outing would be impressive against any level of competition. The right-hander certainly chose a great time to be that sharp, as manager Bob Melvin skipped the big league game to get a closer look at Roupp, who is trying to beat out Kyle Harrison and Hayden Birdsong for the final rotation spot. Melvin said he was impressed by how Roupp got his adrenaline and intensity going in front of only about 50 people.
“He didn’t let anybody play,” Melvin said, smiling. “All he needed was a catcher.”
Roupp has been nearly as dominant at times this spring in Cactus League games. He allowed just one hit and struck out 11 in his first three appearances before stumbling last weekend against the Chicago Cubs and allowing five runs. Roupp said he didn’t feel focused against the Cubs for some reason, and vowed to not let that happen again.
Birdsong and Harrison will try to keep pace in Sunday’s game against the Athletics, and the Giants insist the competition is still wide open. Melvin wouldn’t commit when asked Saturday if Roupp has at least locked up a bullpen job, but at this point it’s hard to see how the Giants could head to Cincinnati later this month without Roupp, who hopes to be in the rotation.
“I don’t think the competition is going to be over until the last day of camp,” he said. “I’ve still got to pitch well and continue to do what I’ve been doing.”
Roupp continues to work on a cutter that he hopes can become a weapon against left-handed hitters. He’s already comfortable with a changeup that is modeled after Logan Webb’s, and the curveball and sinker are as deadly as ever. In 17 innings this spring, Roupp has 27 strikeouts.
Nearly half of them came in a memorable hour at the minor league facility, and a day later, he offered perhaps the understatement of the spring.
The Montreal Canadiens welcomed the Florida Panthers Saturday night at the Bell Centre for the first of three duels in three weeks. The Stanley Cup champions came to town without elite defenseman Aaron Eklad, ace scorer and agitator Matthew Tkachuk, and newly acquired, longtime Boston Bruins pest Brad Marchand. Even without those players, the Cats remain a force to be reckoned with and the Canadiens passed the test with flying colours.
Compared with the Seattle game, this was night and day, effort level-wise in the first frame. Against the Kraken, Jakub Dobes had to fend for himself, with the Canadiens giving up 15 shots in the first 20 minutes. On Saturday night, everybody was skating hard and trying to be first on the puck at both ends of the ice.
Montreal was also much brighter with the puck, not giving it away too much. They only committed two turnovers in the first, and it was through Jayden Struble and Joshua Roy. The game appears to be going a wee bit too fast for Roy. He found himself on the receiving end of a turnover in the slot, but he had two Panthers on him before he could launch his shot. The same is true when deciding whom to pass to; he tends to run out of room and time, which rarely leads to good decisions.
The Canadiens were able to maintain a high level of play all the way through the 60 minutes, only giving Florida nine giveaways, while the Cats cough up 25. Even though the Panthers had an 11-2 edge in shots in the final frame, Montreal played a smart game, controlling the puck as much as they could and committing very few mistakes.
The way Martin St-Louis' men were able to kill Dvorak penalties at six on four with so little time left in the game was clear evidence that this team is maturing nicely. In Seattle, they failed that same test and they learned from it.
Attacking As A Five-Men Unit
While the Canadiens had their best scoring opportunities on the power play on Saturday night, they seemed to consciously try to generate more attack involving the five players on the ice.
Whether it was Mike Matheson, Lane Hutson, or Arber Xhekaj, the forwards used the blueliners more. Perhaps it’s just because the chemistry’s improving, but it was refreshing to see Xhekaj get a couple of clear looks on the net in the same sequence in the second frame.
The Canadiens were also looking for deflections, and it worked like a charm on Christian Dvorak’s goal, the 100th of his career which came off a David Savard shot deflection.
The Benefits Far Outweigh The Downsides
Patrik Laine may not be as complete a player as some would like, but the chatter about a buyout is downright ridiculous. This is a player who cost next to nothing to acquire and who, granted, has a big contract, but it’s not like the Canadiens need the cap space.
Whichever way you look at it, the benefits of having Laine in the lineup far outweigh the downsides. Some would like to make you believe he’s bad for the team culture, but considering how Martin St-Louis handles him, that’s a baseless claim. When the big Finn isn’t pulling his weight on the defensive side of the puck, he plays less; that’s as simple as that.
He may not like it, but the coach holds firm: give me what I want, and I’ll give you what you want. Tonight, Laine gave him what he wanted, given what he had to say about the second line:
Newie’s line played well, Patty had a lot of minutes tonight, and it was deserved. He was then asked if he felt it was one of Laine’s best games, and the reply immediately came: “Yes, that’s what we’re looking for.”
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For a second game in a row Laine set the tone with a timely power play goal and that's invaluable. A working power play can be so important to a team's momentum and it truly is for the Canadiens right now.
The atmosphere was simply magical in the Bell Centre, especially in the third frame; the wave went around and around the rink for such a long time; it was impressive. By the end of it, I was wondering if the Panthers’ players were seasick, to be honest. As for the coach, he loved it:
From start to finish, it was one of the best games we've played since I’ve been here. The fans gave us a treat in the third, and we want to give our all to them. It was a great experience for everyone who was in the building tonight. I had a lot of fun in the third, with how we behaved, the atmosphere, and everything else. We must go try to earn moments like these.
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After this much deserved 3-1 win over the Stanley Cup champions, the Canadiens will enjoy a day off on Sunday, but the coach will still be watching some hockey. He’s headed to Clarkson to see his son Lucas and his Harvard side take on the Knights in game three of the ECAC quarterfinals.
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Shohei Ohtani, center, gestures to teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, left, as Roki Sasaki looks on during a press conference. All three have joined the Dodgers since the 2023 season ended. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Andrew Friedman remembers the talent, the crowd and maybe most of all, the hats.
In February 2023, in the lead-up to the most anticipated World Baseball Classic to date, the Dodgers president of baseball operations accompanied team scouts and executives on a trip to Japan to get an in-person look at the nation’s Samurai Japan national team.
For years the Dodgers had been scouting the improving talent coming out of the country, recognizing that a pipeline of potential major league stars was being cultivated in its rich baseball culture.
While he sat at the Hinata Sun Marine Stadium in Miyazaki, observing nothing more than bullpens and batting practices, Friedman was struck by the scene.
On the field he watched pitchers take the mound in groups of four, each one seemingly pumping high-velocity fastballs and eye-popping breaking pitches with stunningly consistent ease.
In the stands, Friedman was struck by the roughly 20,000 spectators that flocked to the workout, getting a clear reminder of “just how passionate they are about baseball.”
As Friedman scanned the seats, he made another observation: Many fans wore hats of MLB clubs.
“You’d see a Padre hat, a Yankees hat, a Red Sox hat, a Cubs hat, a Rangers hat, a Dodgers hat,” he recalled this spring. “And it got us thinking about an incredible potential opportunity.”
What if, Friedman and fellow executives wondered, the Dodgers could corner the market on top Japanese talent? What if they made themselves Japan’s most popular MLB team?
The Dodgers already were contemplating how to approach Shohei Ohtani’s upcoming free agency. They had long been scouting Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, preparing to pursue each pitcher once they were posted for MLB teams to sign.
Now, they had visions of what Friedman termed a “dream scenario.”
Sign all three. And in the process, effectively “paint Japan blue.”
Fans stop for photos at the entrance plaza of the Tokyo Dome as they arrive to watch the Dodgers work out Friday. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“It was something that I think we envisioned and dreamed of and hoped,” said Galen Carr, who as the Dodgers’ vice president of player personnel has been a central figure in their overseas scouting.
Two years later those grand plans have become a reality. Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki are Dodgers — adding the latter after the former pair helped the team win the World Series last year. And a Japanese fan base once divided has coalesced around its interest in the Dodgers, who arrived in Tokyo last week for their season-opening series against the Chicago Cubs as if they are the home team.
“In 2022, it wasn’t that easy to find a Dodger hat, but more because they weren’t in stock by the volume,” Friedman said.
But over the last year, he quipped: “They weren’t in stock that much — because they kept selling out.”
Long before the Dodgers got Ohtani or their other current stars, they began gaining popularity in Japan’s baseball culture.
It started in 1995, when Hideo Nomo became the first Japanese star to permanently move to Major League Baseball. That career began in controversy, with the pitcher having to exploit a contract loophole with his Japanese team in order to sign with the Dodgers. But it opened the door for others to follow in his footsteps. And more players, particularly pitchers — such as Hiroki Kuroda, Kenta Maeda and Yu Darvish — made a home at Chavez Ravine.
“For this particular organization, there is a historical and inherent appeal in Asia,” Carr said, also noting the Dodgers’ connections in South Korea with pitchers Chan Ho Park and Hyun-Jin Ryu. “I think a lot of us felt strongly about trying to revitalize that; that brand, that excitement for the Dodgers.”
So, over the last several years, the team began dedicating more and more resources to its scouting in the Pacific Rim. And by that point, Yamamoto (a three-time most valuable player in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league) and Sasaki (a longtime scouting darling who’d been throwing 100 mph since high school) already were emerging as two of their top targets — coinciding with Ohtani’s upcoming free agency in MLB.
“For us,” Friedman said, “a major win would have been to get two.”
But in their pursuit of painting Japan blue, they held out hope of landing all three.
Like with most Japanese players, scouting Yamamoto and Sasaki was a nuanced process. MLB officials got virtually no direct access to either since they were still under contract with their Japanese clubs. So when Dodgers officials such as Carr, Asian Pacific scouting director Jon Deeble and others in the international scouting department embarked on trips to see them — Carr estimates he went to Japan roughly 20 times over the last two years — they focused on accomplishing two main purposes.
One: to gather information with both their eyes (by watching games, practices and team workouts) and ears (by collecting more personal nuggets from sources connected to either the player or team).
“That is very similar to what we’d go through here [with domestic draft prospects],” Carr noted.
Two: to simply be seen and “make it known you’re making the effort” to be present.
“As it happens, you kind of stand out when you go over there,” Carr said. “These players, rightfully so, they’re not accessible to us. And for good reason. They’re on someone else’s team. But when you are in the stadium watching, as someone who has made the trip over from the States, that typically garners some attention with the media over there.”
“It’s a little bit embarrassing,” Carr added with a laugh. “Even when I’m over there, there’s all these pictures. But you know that’s making some kind of impression.”
An electronic billboard spanning nearly a city block features advertising starring Shohei Ohtani near the Tokyo Dome — a sign of how much Ohtani and the Dodgers have become something of a de facto home team in Japan. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
As last offseason approached and the Dodgers began crafting their free-agent pitches for Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki (who some around the sport thought might be posted to MLB after the 2023 season), there was still one dynamic they couldn’t be certain of.
There was an industry belief that Japanese stars preferred to not play on the same MLB teams. And while the Dodgers had their doubts about that theory — to Friedman, it didn’t square with the camaraderie he witnessed from Japan’s victorious 2023 WBC team — they remained wary of the unknown deep into their discussions with Ohtani and Yamamoto.
“Going through the process with Yoshinobu and Shohei, and asking the question of, ‘How comfortable would you be to play with the other,’ the answers were positive,” Friedman recalled. “But we still weren’t sure what that meant.”
After Ohtani signed his unprecedented $700-million deal in December 2023, he immediately went to work on recruiting Yamamoto. And when those efforts resulted in another record-breaking $325-million agreement — giving Yamamoto the largest contract in MLB history for a pitcher outside of Ohtani — the Dodgers turned their sights toward Sasaki the following offseason.
Their dreams of painting Japan blue were coming true.
He’s become the agent of many Japanese players in recent years, representing Darvish, Kodai Senga, Seiya Suzuki and Yamamoto too.
But even Joel Wolfe, the executive vice president and managing executive of baseball at Wasserman Media Group, couldn’t help but notice the way things changed in Japan once Ohtani and Yamamoto joined the Dodgers.
Every single game, he noted, was broadcast live on television in the morning — a 7 p.m. start in Los Angeles, for example, is on at 11 a.m. in Japan — and rerun in the evening. At almost every Japanese stadium there would be pop-up shops selling gear for three teams: the home team, the road team and the Dodgers.
It led Wolfe to make a resounding observation this offseason, when he said “the Dodgers do have a home-field advantage in Japan.”
“They’re everywhere,” he said. “All the players and fans see the Dodgers every day, so it’s always in their mind, because of Ohtani and Yamamoto.”
And when it came to Sasaki — Wolfe’s latest star Japanese client — that influence seemingly applied once again.
Dodgers teammates Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto celebrate winning the World Series at Yankee Stadium last October. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers were considered front-runners throughout his free agency. And while two other finalists, the San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays, made late pushes, his decision to sign in Los Angeles surprised almost no one in the industry.
“Getting Shohei and Yoshinobu,” Carr said, “I think really helped set the table for Roki.”
The Dodgers cite other reasons for their ability to land Sasaki — who will make his MLB debut Wednesday in Tokyo, following Yamamoto as the team’s second starter during their season-opening series against the Chicago Cubs.
Friedman noted the “don’t assume anything” ethos to the club’s recruiting pitches — a style forged through past, often unsuccessful bids for such players, including Ohtani when he first came over from Japan in 2017.
Carr, meanwhile, also pointed to the years of scouting information the club collected on Sasaki, knowledge that proved crucial when the pitcher presented interested teams with a “homework assignment” that solicited ideas on how he could reverse a dip in fastball velocity that plagued him last year.
“There’s a ton of value in being able to source that information, and look back to [what was working] two years before when his velocity was up,” Carr said. “We had people to do that. You can’t just ask anyone.”
Still, when asked this week how the Dodgers’ popularity in Japan changed last year in the wake of Ohtani and Yamamoto signing in L.A., Sasaki noted how often he saw them on TV and how much attention their run to the World Series generated.
“That made their presence even greater,” he said in Japanese.
The Dodgers’ hope is for that same dynamic to apply to future waves of prospects coming out of Japan — with Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki, in the view of team evaluators, serving as the forebearers of a potential golden generation of Japanese baseball.
“If you ask me about the next five years in Japan, I could name at least three really interesting names that we’re going to be looking at moving forward and have our eyes on,” Carr said.
“In our ideal world,” Friedman added, “kids are growing up in Japan, watching Dodger games, being a fan of the team. And when they have a decision to make, that gives us some advantage in the process.”
Time will tell exactly how impactful the Dodgers’ popularity surge proves to be. As even Wolfe noted, “every player is an individual and sees the world through his lens and his background and upbringing.”
“Yoshinobu and Roki,” he added, “chose the Dodgers for very different reasons.”
Still, early in this week’s trip to Tokyo, the team has seen one sign of its popularity after another — including at yet another well-attended workout Friday at the Tokyo Dome.
Just like Friedman’s trip to see Team Japan two years earlier, the Dodgers’ practice attracted fans by the thousands (10,507 to be exact, a capacity ticket allotment that sold out in an hour). They cheered for batting practice, baserunning drills and sessions of catch in the outfield.
This time, however, there was no question about which team was best represented. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but Dodgers swag and waves of blue.
“There’s gonna be a lot of representation for the Dodgers,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think our mission was accomplished, painting the country of Japan blue.”
Wales U18s girls have travelled to Treviso to face Italy U18s at Villorba Rugby Club in a training game this afternoon ahead of their Six Nations Festival campaign next month. Wales head coach, Siwan Lillicrap said the match offers a fantastic opportunity for the squad to put into practice all the hard work they’ve put […]
