Kazuma Okamoto is returning to the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n
The Toronto Blue Jays<\/a> third baseman will once again suit up for Japan this spring. He signed a four-year, $60 million deal with the Jays earlier this month.<\/p>\n Okamoto hit .333 with six hits, two home runs and seven runs batted in over 18 at-bats in seven WBC games in 2023.<\/p>\n Okamoto, 29, was one of seven big leaguers named to the defending champions\u2019 roster on Monday. He joins Shohei Ohtani<\/a> and Yoshinobu Yamamoto<\/a> of the Los Angeles Dodgers<\/a>, the Chicago Cubs<\/a>\u2019 Seiya Suzuki<\/a>, Yusei Kikuchi<\/a> of the Los Angeles Angels<\/a>, Munetaka Murakami of the Chicago White Sox<\/a> and Yuki Matsui<\/a> of the San Diego Padres<\/a>. Pitcher Tomoyuki Sugano<\/a>, who spent last season with the Baltimore Orioles<\/a>, is also on the squad.<\/p>\n Two prominent major leaguers from the 2023 team will not be competing in 2026. St. Louis Cardinals<\/a> outfielder Lars Nootbaar<\/a> is still recuperating from offseason surgery, while Dodgers pitcher Roki Sasaki<\/a> has declined an offer as he prepares for his second big league season after an injury-riddled first campaign.<\/p>\n Japan will play in Pool C alongside Australia, South Korea, Czechia and Chinese Taipei.<\/p>\n They first see action on Mar. 6 against Chinese Taipei at the Tokyo Dome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kazuma Okamoto is returning to the World Baseball Classic. The Toronto Blue Jays third baseman will once again…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":539270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2378],"tags":[30173,5,377,2554,4,282,70,46737,2553],"class_list":{"0":"post-539269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-blue-jays","8":"tag-apple-news","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-blue-jays","11":"tag-bluejays","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-toronto","14":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","15":"tag-toronto-blue-jays-sports-baseball-team-team-statscom-238","16":"tag-torontobluejays"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115962941744137437","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/539270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}