By RONALD BLUM AP Baseball Writer
MIAMI — Shohei Ohtani emerged from the bullpen and struck out Angels teammate Mike Trout for the final out in a matchup the whole baseball world wanted to see, leading Japan over the defending champion United States, 3-2, Tuesday night for its first World Baseball Classic title since 2009.
“Whether I got him out or he got a hit off me, I didn’t want to make any regrets. I wanted to make my best pitch,” Ohtani said through an interpreter.
He did, and then some.
Trying to protect a razor-thing edge, with two outs and nobody on base, Ohtani flashed 100 mph heat in getting Trout to swing and miss at two fastballs. With the count full, Trout waved at a sharp slider to end the ninth inning.
“I think every baseball fan wanted to see that. I’ve been answering questions about it for the last month and a half,” Trout said.
“Did you think it was going to end in any other way?” he said.
Ohtani, the two-way star who has captivated fans across two continents, was voted MVP of the WBC and clutched the award against his chest.
After walking major league batting champion Jeff McNeil to begin the ninth, Ohtani got Dodgers star Mookie Betts to ground into a double play.
That brought up Trout, the U.S. captain and a three-time American League MVP.
“I saw him take a big deep breath to try and control his emotions,” Team USA manager Mark DeRosa said. “I can’t even imagine being in that moment, the two best players on the planet locking horns as teammates in that spot.”
Ohtani wound up with a save. His only other save came in a Japan postseason playoff game in 2016.
“He’s got nasty stuff,” Trout said. “He threw me a good pitch at the end.”
Just not the ending DeRosa wanted.
“I was hoping it was going to go our way with Mikey popping one against Ohtani,” he said.
“The whole world got to see Ohtani come in, big spot, battling. It’s kind of how it was kind of scripted. I just wish it would have went different,” he said.
He added: “But the baseball world won tonight.”
Ohtani batted .435 with one homer, four doubles, eight RBIs and 10 walks as Japan joined the Dominican Republic in 2013 to become the only unbeaten champions of baseball’s premier national team tournament. Ohtani, the 2021 AL MVP was 2-0 with a save and a 1.86 ERA on the mound, striking out 11 in 9-2/3 innings.
“What he’s doing in the game is what probably 90% of the guys in that clubhouse did in Little League or in youth tournaments, and he’s able to pull it off on the biggest stages,” DeRosa said. “He is a unicorn to the sport. I think other guys will try it, but I don’t think they’re going to do it to his level.”
Japan went 7-0 and outscored its opponents 56-18, reaching the final for the first time since winning the first two WBCs in 2006 and 2009. No other nation has won the title more than once.
Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto homered as Japan built a 3-2 lead.
Trea Turner put the U.S. ahead in the second with his record-tying fifth home run of the tournament and Kyle Schwarber pulled the Americans within a run when he went deep in the eighth off of Padres pitcher Yu Darvish.
It was the second straight major title for the Japanese, who beat the U.S., 2-0, in Yokohama for the 2021 Olympic gold medal. Japan used top players in that tournament while the U.S. sent released major leaguers and top prospects.
Turner put the U.S. ahead in the second inning with a drive to left against Shota Imanaga (1-0), tying South Korea’s Seung Yuop Lee in 2006 for the most in a WBC. That lit up a sellout crowd of 36,098 – fans were given wristbands with colored lights that flickered.
Murakami, at 23 already a two-time Central League MVP, tied the score on the first pitch of the bottom half when Merrill Kelly (0-1) elevated a fastball. Murakami drove it at 115.1 mph into the upper deck in right field, 432 feet away.
Murakami’s two-run walk-off double lifted Japan over Mexico, 6-5, in Monday night’s semifinal and his third-inning homer off Nick Martinez put Japan ahead in the 2021 gold medal game.
Japan loaded the bases in the second on singles by Okamoto and Sosuke Genda, and a walk to Yuhei Nakamura. Lars Nootbaar, the first non-Japanese-born player to appear for the Samurai Warriors, followed with a run-scoring groundout off of Angels reliever Aaron Loup for a 2-1 lead.
Okamoto boosted the lead in the fourth when he sent a flat slider from Kyle Freeland over the wall in left-center.
Japan was outhit 9-5 as Imanaga combined with six relievers to hold the U.S. to 0 for 7 with runners in scoring position. The 29-year-old left-hander and Shosei Togo pitched two innings each, Hiroto Takahashi, Hiromi Itoh and Taisei Ota got three outs each, with Ota escaping two-on, no-outs trouble by retiring Trout on a flyout and getting Paul Goldschmidt to ground into a double play.
Trout and Ohtani hugged behind the batting cage during pregame workouts, then held their nation’s flags while leading their teams toward home plate in single file during the introductions, Trout down the right field line and Ohtani in left.
Several thousand fans had arrived hours early to watch Ohtani take batting practice and applauded when he hit a drive off the video board above the second deck in center field.
Trout hit .296 in the tournament with one homer, seven RBIs and 12 strikeouts.
WBC RETURNS IN SPRING 2026
The WBC will return for its sixth edition in March 2026, with organizers concluding spring training remains a better time than after the World Series or in the middle of the major league season.
Speaking before Tuesday night’s title game, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said MLB owners and general managers have to be persuaded to make more star pitchers available to national teams.
Since its launch in 2006, the WBC has been played in March, ahead of club Opening Day in MLB, Japan and South Korea.
“We have talked about timing until your head hurts,” Manfred said. “There’s just no perfect time. You can’t really do it after the playoffs because so many players have been down. We have talked about something in the middle of the season. I think on balance, although it’s not perfect, this is probably the right place for it.”
Many MLB teams blocked pitchers from participating, wanting them to concentrate on preparing for the season’s start.
“From a competitive perspective, I think the most important thing is we’re going to need to continue to work, particularly with our clubs, about pitching,” Manfred said. “Obviously, it’s great the guys we’ve had, but I think that I’d like to see pitching staffs that are of the same quality as our position players.”
“Pitching in a high-leverage situation like these are, that actually helps players develop, No. 1,” he added. “No. 2, that we staff the teams in a way that pitchers are used appropriately and the staffs of WBC communicate with the clubs about what’s going on with the individual players and make good judgments.”
U.S. manager Mark DeRosa said he told clubs that he would never have a pitcher warm up twice in the bullpen on the same day. Once a pitcher warms up, he had to enter the game then or not be used.
Two All-Stars players got hurt during the WBC. New York Mets closer Edwin Díaz injured a knee during a postgame celebration with Puerto Rico last week and had season-ending surgery. Houston Astros second baseman Jose Altuve broke his right thumb when he was hit by a pitch and needs an operation that will keep him sidelined for a period still to be announced.
“Maybe the best testimony to it is how the players, after the unfortunate injury that Díaz had, how the players came out and spoke in support of the tournament,” Manfred said. “It’s an indication that they really, really care about the event.”
He said the WBC will continue to take on the insurance of players participating with their national teams.
“You can’t play this event without insuring the players,” he said. “It’s enough that the teams take the risk that somebody is going to be down, but to then say, oh, by the way, you get to pay for it, I don’t think that’s fair.”
Manfred is open to returning to Puerto Rico or possibly playing in the Dominican Republic. Every WBC edition has included games in Japan. Puerto Rico hosted in 2006, ’09 and ’13, Mexico in ’2009 and ’17, Taiwan in 2013 and this year and South Korea in 2017.
Unlike the World Cup in soccer, he doesn’t intend for the WBC to become a bigger event than MLB’s playoffs and World Series.
“I don’t foresee or actually want the tournament to be bigger than our traditional format,” he said. “The World Series is always going to be the World Series, but I don’t see it as an either/or proposition. This is a different kind of competition. We do it to grow the game and internationalize the game.”
MONEY MATTERS
Japan gets $3 million in prize money and the U.S. $1.7 million. Half of each goes to players, the other half to the national baseball federation.
UP NEXT
MLB openers are on March 30, the same day the season starts in Japan.
SHOHEI OHTANI STRIKES OUT MIKE TROUT TO WIN THE #WORLDBASEBALLCLASSIC! pic.twitter.com/F7vUtIiRR1
— MLB (@MLB) March 22, 2023
Trout vs Ohtani lived up to the HYPE! #WorldBaseballClassic pic.twitter.com/Z8aZAjpDRg
— World Baseball Classic (@WBCBaseball) March 22, 2023
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