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What’s the Future of Baseball in Japan as the Best Players Leave for MLB?

 The Associated Press  |    Mar 17th, 2025 8:19pm EDT

TOKYO (AP) — Shohei Ohtani is widely regarded as the best player in Major League Baseball, and Ichiro Suzuki enters the Hall of Fame later this year, reminders that some of the top talent in American baseball is now Japanese.

That’s a point of pride at home, but also a reason to worry.

What happens to baseball in Japan, to the country’s pro league, if the stars all leave for the United States?

About a dozen Japanese played in MLB last season, headlined by Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers. They came up through Nippon Professional Baseball and waited for free agency under the Japanese system, or were allowed to go earlier by their clubs.

But times are changing.

Two young stars — 19-year-old Rintaro Sasaki and 18-year-old Shotaro Morii — have moved directly to American baseball, bypassing NPB restrictions and unwritten societal norms of playing first in Japan. Sasaki is a freshman at Stanford, while Morii has a minor league contract with the Athletics.

Yamamoto signed a $325 million, 12-year deal last offseason and was asked a few weeks ago at spring training in Arizona if the loss of great players could hurt Japanese baseball.

“That’s a good question, a difficult question,” Yamamoto said through an interpreter. “There are lots of different opinions about it.”

The outflow from Japan

A slugging first baseman, Rintaro Sasaki skipped the NPB draft last year and signed to play college baseball at Stanford. He attended Hanamaki Higashi High School, the same high school as Ohtani and where Sasaki’s father, Hiroshi, is the baseball coach.

Sasaki will be eligible for the MLB draft in 2026.

“I don’t know how I will influence Japanese high school baseball players, but I’m just going on my path, my way,” he said speaking in English to The Associated Press.

His father has acknowledged pointing his son toward MLB rather than being the likely No. 1 draft choice in Japanese baseball. Sasaki can now earn money through name, image and likeness deals, just as other college athletes. Sasaki has such deals, all in Japan.

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The Associated Press