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The 2023 World Baseball Classic ended with a matchup of Angels teammates, Shohei Ohtani pitching to Mike Trout with the game on the line. In a showdown between MVPs, Ohtani struck out Trout on a 3-and-2 slider, giving Japan its third WBC championship.

There won’t be similar dramatics for this edition — at least not with Ohtani on the mound. During DodgerFest on Saturday, manager Dave Roberts cleared up one key question heading into spring training and the March tournament.

“He’s not gonna pitch in the WBC, but he will be ramping up his arm to get ready for the season,” Roberts said, adding that Ohtani made the decision.

“I wasn’t surprised,” Roberts said. “I can’t even say I was relieved. Understanding what he did last year, understanding what he had to go through, to then how best to prepare himself for ’26 to do both, it just seemed like the right decision.”

Ohtani said in November he would participate in the WBC but did not signal whether he would pitch. When Team Japan’s roster was announced Monday, manager Hirokazu Ibata did not say if Ohtani would pitch, saying only they would get a better sense in spring training. Speaking with reporters before Roberts, Ohtani said he wasn’t sure if he would pitch during the tournament.

“In terms of the World Baseball Classic, I just have to see how my body feels, continue to feel the progression and see what happens so I’m gonna be fully prepared as a DH,” he said through an interpreter.

The expectation has been he will be able to pitch without restrictions from the start of the season. “I’m not going to manage him differently as far as each outing,” Roberts said. “There’s certainly going to be extra time, it’s not a five-day, six-day rotation. So there’s going to be rest in between. But outside of that, it’s not going to be the two-inning, three-inning [start], he’s just going to be used as a normal pitcher.”

In 2023, Ohtani was the MVP of the WBC with a .435 batting average and 1.86 ERA. Five months later Ohtani was pulled from a start at Angel Stadium for what ultimately was revealed to be a torn elbow ligament.

Ohtani had his second Tommy John surgery in September 2024 and did not return to pitching until last June with the Dodgers.

In his first year pitching for the Dodgers, Ohtani finished the regular season with a 2.87 ERA in 47 innings. In the playoffs he posted a 4.43 ERA in 20-1/3 innings over four starts — including one in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series in which he struck out 10 while hitting three home runs, a performance Roberts called “probably the greatest postseason performance of all time” and earned him the series MVP.

MLB players like Ohtani and Dodgers right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto are expected to join Team Japan for exhibition games on March 2. Japan will open WBC play March 6 against Taiwan.

Dodgers right-hander Roki Sasaki, who will be returning to the starting rotation after missing most of his rookie season because of a shoulder injury, said Saturday that the Dodgers made him unavailable for the WBC. Sasaki was on Team Japan in 2023, starting two games, including a dramatic semifinal win over Mexico.