{"id":603377,"date":"2026-03-03T10:20:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:20:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/603377\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T10:20:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T10:20:30","slug":"a-calming-presence-and-a-strong-heart-yusei-kikuchi-all-set-for-wbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/603377\/","title":{"rendered":"A calming presence and a \u2018strong heart.\u2019 Yusei Kikuchi all set for WBC."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                                    OSAKA \u2013 <\/p>\n<p>Despite some early jitters in an exhibition game, veteran pitcher Yusei Kikuchi is aiming to make an impact for Japan at the World Baseball Classic, both on and off the field.<\/p>\n<p>At 34, Kikuchi is making his Samurai Japan debut and is one of the oldest members of the team. It\u2019s hoped that he can serve in a role similar to the one Yu Darvish fulfilled in the last tournament.<\/p>\n<p>Darvish, who isn\u2019t taking part this time, appeared in multiple games for defending champion Japan in the 2023 WBC, including pitching two innings in the quarterfinals against Italy and coming out of the bullpen in the championship game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OSAKA \u2013 Despite some early jitters in an exhibition game, veteran pitcher Yusei Kikuchi is aiming to make&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":603378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2302],"tags":[5,2353,2352,4820,809],"class_list":{"0":"post-603377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-npb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-nippon-professional-baseball","10":"tag-npb","11":"tag-world-baseball-classic","12":"tag-yusei-kikuchi"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116164744124244096","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603377","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=603377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/603377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/603378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=603377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=603377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=603377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}