The Dodgers took both games from the Cubs in the season-opening Tokyo Series this week, commencing their much-hyped title defense with a comfy head start on the rest of the league.
Both teams will now return stateside and play a few more exhibitions before resuming their regular seasons on March 27 along with everyone else.
Here are six big questions sparked by L.A.’s and Chicago’s first two contests of 2025.
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1. What are reasonable expectations for Roki Sasaki’s command as a rookie?
The 23-year-old Sasaki made his highly anticipated debut Wednesday and delivered a performance that resembled his first couple of spring training starts but taken to the extreme: His heater was humming, his splitter was dancing, and he looked virtually unhittable, but severe struggles with command hampered his overall effectiveness. Just 25 of Sasaki’s 56 pitches on Wednesday went for strikes, a staggeringly low percentage that is certainly unsustainable if he wants to be a reliable rotation option long-term. Although he allowed only one hit and one run, Sasaki walked five of the 14 batters he faced, forcing Dave Roberts to end the right-hander’s outing after just three innings.
As shaky as it has been so far — and it’s unfair to put too much stock into a debut that occurred on a gigantic stage on several levels — there are two key factors that could serve as sources of optimism. For one, Sasaki generally exhibited solid control during his career in Japan, with a 7.1% walk rate in 2024 and a 5.7% mark over his four-year NPB tenure. Second, we just watched Yankees starter Luis Gil win the AL Rookie of the Year award with the highest walk rate of all MLB pitchers with at least 100 innings pitched. It’s not difficult to find recent precedent of starting pitchers having success despite issuing a frustrating number of free passes along the way.
If Sasaki’s stuff is good enough to ensure that the hits allowed are few and far between — as was the case for Gil in 2024 and other effectively wild aces such as Dylan Cease and Blake Snell — then he could still thrive to a certain degree in his current form. More likely is that as Sasaki becomes more comfortable with how his arsenal plays against big-league bats, it will become easier for him to attack the zone accordingly. How long it takes him to make that adjustment remains to be seen, but it’s one of the biggest keys to his development at this stage of his major-league career. — J.S.
2. When will we see Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman?
Lost beneath the pomp, circumstance, fanfare and pair of Dodgers victories was the absence of two of L.A.’s best hitters. Betts and Freeman both made the cross-pacific trip, but neither appeared in a Tokyo Series game. Betts flew back to the States earlier in the week after contracting an illness that caused him to lose a whopping 15 pounds. Freeman, meanwhile, was scratched an hour before the first pitch of Game 1 due to rib discomfort. It’s the same painful injury that the 2024 World Series MVP played through last postseason.
Freeman, who unsuccessfully tried to argue his way into the Game 2 lineup, should be ready for Opening Day, according to Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. Betts’ status, on the other hand, is much murkier, considering the severity of his weight loss and presumed lack of strength.
These absences don’t appear to be season-altering, but they are a pertinent reminder that this club has one of the oldest position-player groups in baseball. When Tommy Edman turns 30 on May 9, Roberts will regularly be rolling out lineups composed exclusively of tricenarians. That’s not inherently a bad thing — the Dodgers bang — but it’s a strategy more susceptible to the randomness of injury luck. Older players, even stalwarts such as Betts and Freeman, tend to be less reliable. That’s important, considering that the only possible way this Dodgers season goes sideways is beneath an avalanche of injuries. — J.M.
3. Should the Dodgers play in Tokyo every year?
Their bank account and that of MLB certainly say yes.
More than 25 million people in Japan tuned in for Game 1, absolutely shattering the all-time record for the most-watched MLB game in the country’s history. Shohei Ohtani is the most popular human being in Japan, and his joining the Dodgers has made them the country’s most popular team. Meaningfully sustaining the relationship between Japan and the Dodgers (and, by proxy, MLB) is an absolute must for the league.
But every year?
Finding a new team to fly across the Pacific to get whooped by the Dodgers could become difficult and expensive for the league. Dodgers players could get tired of it, once the novelty wears off. Maybe even the Japanese players would grow weary of the annual circus of it all. But while there are certainly some logistical downsides to starting every season in Japan, the financial payoff here is significant and alluring. — J.M.
4. How will the Cubs’ lineup ultimately shake out?
It wasn’t the most inspiring start to the season for the Cubs’ offense, which mustered just four runs on 11 hits in the two Tokyo contests, with three of those knocks belonging to No. 9 hitter Jon Berti in Game 2. An 0-for-8 with four strikeouts for star Japanese slugger Seiya Suzuki was perhaps the most disappointing showing among the Cubs bats, considering the circumstances, but none of the other primary bats produced much excitement, either.
Third baseman Matt Shaw played his first two games as a big leaguer and looked stellar with the glove but overmatched at the plate, notching his first career hit on an infield single back to the pitcher. There are high hopes for Shaw’s ability to contribute right away as one of baseball’s top prospects, so we’ll see if he can find his groove once back in the U.S. — especially if he’s to remain in the middle of the Cubs lineup ahead of a more proven bat such as Dansby Swanson.
Big-ticket winter addition Kyle Tucker slotted in at third behind Suzuki for his first two games as a Cub, with mainstay left fielder Ian Happ handling leadoff duties. Second baseman Nico Hoerner was not in Tokyo as he continues to recover from offseason elbow surgery, but it sounds like he should be back in the mix sooner rather than later. We saw manager Craig Counsell use a litany of lineups in his first year as Cubs skipper, so it’ll be interesting to see if Counsell settles on a relatively set order in the early going of 2025 or opts to shake it up with high frequency. — J.M.
5. Could Yoshinobu Yamamoto be a Cy Young contender?
From a raw-stuff, natural-ability, effectiveness perspective? Absolutely.
Last year, in his first season, the Dodgers right-hander delivered a 3.00 ERA in 90 frames across 18 starts. His 28.5% strikeout rate was 12th among pitchers within that innings threshold. But if you do a little convenient math and remove his stinker of a debut start (5 ER in 1 IP), the numbers get better, plummeting his ERA to 2.53 across 89 innings. Extrapolate that irresponsibly across a full season of work, and yeah, for sure, this dude could win the Cy Young.
If only it were that simple.
Even today, when starting pitchers are working shallower into games than ever before, bulk still matters. Yamamoto missed a big stretch of time on the IL last year, but even when healthy, he averaged only five innings per start. Compare that to Cy Young winner Chris Sale, who was around 6 1/3 innings per start. Granted, the Dodgers kept the training wheels on Yamamoto for his first MLB season, but he needs to (1) work deeper into games and (2) surpass the 150-inning mark, at minimum, to be a serious Cy Young candidate. That, unfortunately, feels unlikely, considering how hesitant the Dodgers might be to lean on their young star. Keeping Yamamoto healthy for October is the team’s top priority — not ensuring he has the bulk to win an award. — J.S.
6. When will Shohei Ohtani’s rehab as a pitcher resume?
Shohei Ohtani was one of the offensive stars for the Dodgers in the Tokyo Series. He was the only hitter from either team to notch multiple hits and score multiple runs in Game 1, and he followed that with a homer and two walks in Game 2, including one of the intentional variety that earned opposing manager Craig Counsell some hearty boos from the crowd.
But another important bit of news surfaced in the days leading up to the games in Tokyo, as we received a notable update on Ohtani’s plans to return later this season as a two-way force. Before leaving for Tokyo, Dave Roberts revealed that Ohtani’s pitching rehab progression had been slowed, with the superstar having not thrown off the mound since Feb. 25 and still yet to face hitters. Ohtani confirmed this in Tokyo with a bit of insight on his mindset at this stage of the rehab process.
“I wanted to prioritize the hitting aspect as we’re getting into the season, to get a little breather mentally and physically on the pitching side of things,” he said. “This is according to plan, and I’m quite pleased with how things are going.”
This is all well and good and a reasonable approach to take with the unusual start to the season for Ohtani and the Dodgers on the other side of the globe, but let’s keep an eye on how Ohtani’s ramp-up as a pitcher continues once the team gets back into the rhythm of the regular season. In the offseason, Roberts had floated May as a possible return to two-way duties for Ohtani, but that feels optimistic considering Ohtani has yet to face hitters as part of his rehab.
That said, doubting Ohtani to accomplish anything at this point feels foolish, so perhaps he believes he’s right on schedule for a May return. No matter his exact timeline, how Ohtani finds the time in his busy schedule as one of the best hitters on the planet to rebuild his workload on the mound is yet another intriguing subplot for baseball’s main character. — J.S.
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