The World Baseball Classic is continuing in Tokyo. After Australia came through with two victories over the last two days, we saw greatness from Japan on Friday. The Japanese player who came through with a big game was Shohei Ohtani, arguably the greatest baseball player of all-time. Ohtani hit a grand slam in a dominant 13-0 Japan win over Chinese Taipei. The game only lasted seven innings as the mercy rule was in effect.
Ohtani has three Major League Baseball grand slams. In a remarkable statistic, all three career grand slams for Ohtani have come against the Tampa Bay Rays. They came in an 11-3 Los Angeles Angels win over the Rays on May 9, 2022, in a 9-6 Angels loss to the Rays on August 18, 2023, and in a 7-3 Los Angeles Dodgers win over the Rays on August 23, 2024.
We also saw solid pitching from Japanese starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the World Series MVP. In a post in the fall we discussed why Yamamoto could be considered baseball’s best pitcher at the moment. On Friday, Yamamoto threw two and two third shutout innings despite struggling with some early season control as he had three walks. However, Yamamoto did not give up a base hit or an earned run during 53 pitches.
Japan seems to be the class of Pool C, but it will be very interesting to see how they do against Australia and South Korea in their next two games. Australia and South Korea have looked strong in their first two games to date, and the winner of the game between Australia and South Korea should get one of the two playoff spots and a berth in the quarterfinals. Australia will play South Korea on Monday.
