It Was the Year of Shohei Ohtani (Again)

Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani had a pair of major bookend events in his 2025, and a whole lot more dominance in between, extending his run as one of the most impactful athletes of the 21st century. 

The two-way phenom began the year as part of a Major League Baseball season-opening trip involving his Dodgers and the Cubs in his home country of Japan. The pair of games in Tokyo set an array of records for viewership, attendance, and merchandise sales, ultimately standing as one of the league’s most successful overseas trips ever. 

The end of the year featured an expected—but still momentous—announcement of his return to play for Japan in the 2026 World Baseball Classic. There, he will look to help Japan defend its tournament title from 2023, but will face a stacked field that includes a U.S. team featuring Yankees superstar Aaron Judge, Pirates fireballer Paul Skenes, and Phillies slugger Kyle Schwarber.

In the eight months in between those two events, Ohtani:

• Returned to pitching after an absence of 21 months from the mound
• Had arguably the single-greatest playoff game of any player in MLB history, hitting three home runs and striking out 10 on the mound in a series-clinching win over the Brewers in the National League Championship Series
• Reached base a record nine times in a dramatic, 18-inning win over Toronto in Game 3 of the World Series
• Played a key role in the Dodgers becoming MLB’s first back-to-back champions in 25 years
• Unanimously won the NL MVP award, his second straight since joining the Dodgers, and fourth win overall

“He’s a freak. I mean, that guy,” Dodgers reliever Will Klein said of Ohtani during the World Series, “I don’t know how anyone can do what he does. Being the best hitter and the best pitcher in the league. I don’t think there’s a word to describe it other than he’s the GOAT.”

As a result, Ohtani is entering the type of rarified air only occupied by truly transcendent talents such as Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Tom Brady. 

“This guy is a different kind of athlete and a different brain,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani. 

The Japan Effect

Ohtani is now far from the only Japanese star competing in Major League Baseball. On his own team, Ohtani is joined by fellow pitchers Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, with the latter just claiming Most Valuable Player honors in the dramatic World Series win over the Blue Jays.

The current offseason player market features several potentially impact players from Japan, including slugger Munetaka Murakami, who just signed with the White Sox, and pitcher Tatsuya Imai, among others. Japanese players have been playing in MLB for more than 60 years, starring for more than 30, and Ichiro Suzuki in 2025 became the first Japanese-born player inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, doing so with a 99.7% vote total that tied Derek Jeter for the second-highest percentage in the institution’s history.

Ohtani, however, is helping showcase a whole other level of impact that Japanese players can have in MLB. He’s also helped drive a spike in Japanese tourism to the U.S., and to Dodger Stadium specifically. Los Angeles tourism officials estimate that more than 80% of Japanese visitors to the region include a Dodger game in their itinerary, and the club has added Japanese-speaking tour guides to help manage the influx. 

The fandom around Ohtani is such that Japanese viewership of major MLB events is now considered and reported right along with U.S. audiences.

“Shohei has just absolutely been the greatest benefit to the game you can imagine throughout the year,” said MLB commissioner Rob Manfred.