Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani expressed regret Monday for his \u201cshortcomings\u201d following Japan\u2019s early exit from the World Baseball Classic.<\/p>\n
It is unclear what those shortcomings might have been. Over four games during this year\u2019s tournament, Ohtani led Japan with a .462 batting average, three home runs and seven RBIs in 13 at-bats.<\/p>\n
Those stats are even better than the ones he posted as the MVP of the last WBC. Over seven games in 2023, Ohtani hit .435 with one home run and eight RBIs in 23 at-bats to lead Japan to its third WBC championship.<\/p>\n
Overall, however, Japan finished with a .284 batting average, down from a .299 average three years ago. Ohtani accounted for his team\u2019s final out of the 2026 tournament – an infield popup to seal an 8-5 quarterfinal loss to Venezuela on Saturday – and took to Instagram two days later.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you to all the fans for your support. Your cheers pushed us forward every day,\u201d Ohtani wrote in Japanese. \u201cWe didn\u2019t achieve the results we hoped for, and I deeply regret my own shortcomings.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two-way superstar did not pitch in this year\u2019s WBC after famously striking out then-Angels teammate Mike Trout of the United States for the final out of the 2023 championship game and going 2-0 with one save and a 1.86 ERA in that tournament.<\/p>\n
Ohtani had his second Tommy John surgery in September 2023 and did not pitch again until last June with the Dodgers. Manager Dave Roberts revealed in January that Ohtani had decided not to pitch in the WBC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani expressed regret Monday for his \u201cshortcomings\u201d following Japan\u2019s early exit from the World Baseball…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":627823,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[2315,2309,5,2316,2323,2314,2317,2313,2325,62046,57,19,2310,2328,2304,2318,2308,2319,4,2305,2303,2307,2321,468,185,2324,2311,2312,4820],"class_list":{"0":"post-627822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-athletic-sports","9":"tag-ball-and-bat-games","10":"tag-baseball","11":"tag-baseball-competitions","12":"tag-baseball-events","13":"tag-baseball-finals","14":"tag-baseball-games","15":"tag-baseball-playoffs-and-champions","16":"tag-baseball-teams","17":"tag-japan-national-baseball-team","18":"tag-los-angeles-dodgers","19":"tag-major-league-baseball","20":"tag-major-league-baseball-competitions","21":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","22":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","23":"tag-major-league-baseball-seasons","24":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams","25":"tag-major-league-baseball-teams-seasons","26":"tag-mlb","27":"tag-mlb-playoffs","28":"tag-mlb-postseason","29":"tag-outdoor-sports","30":"tag-seasons-in-baseball","31":"tag-shohei-ohtani","32":"tag-sports","33":"tag-sports-events","34":"tag-team-sports","35":"tag-turf-sports","36":"tag-world-baseball-classic"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627822","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=627822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/627822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/627823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=627822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=627822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=627822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}