Wake Up, It’s Baseball Again

And it's still the Dodgers

For the second straight year, the MLB season opens in Asia. Five Japanese players have returned to their home country for this series. Both starting pitchers — Shota Imanaga and Yoshinobu Yamamoto — are Japanese. The best part is that, in any language, it’s baseball season.

Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman are out of the lineup due to illness and injury, respectively. The adversity feels like an ongoing story rather than something new for this Dodgers team. The final game of the World Series was only 140 days ago. It was a short offseason for LA.

Imanaga pitches to Shohei Ohtani in Tokyo to start the new season: a routine groundout that must have felt anything but routine for fans of all ages in Japan.

Imanaga works quickly in a perfect top of the first. The coffee is brewing. I’m tired, but I stopped questioning waking up for this game as soon as we hit the middle of the first inning. It’s still the middle of the night in California, Yamamoto is experiencing difficulties with his PitchCom set, and home plate umpire Bill Miller awards a ball to Cubs leadoff hitter Ian Happ. 1-0, and not a pitch has been thrown.

Yamamoto misses wide on the full count pitch, and Happ draws a walk to leadoff the home half of the first.

Outfielder Seiza Suzuki takes a healthy hack at the first pitch and fouls it off. Yamamoto saws him off a couple pitches later and shortstop Miguel Rojas hauls in the soft bloop for the first out.

Kyle Tucker steps in for his first plate appearance with the Cubs. Tucker’s trade from the Astros to Chicago was a major this winter. Along with Corbin Burnes and Juan Soto, Tucker was part of the talent migration to the National League.

Yamamoto’s splitter is nasty. He relies on it to get ahead of cleanup hitter Michael Busch. The game’s first baserunner — aided and abetted by that automatic ball — is stranded. Scoreless after the first.

My son and I logged about 16 hours in the car over the weekend. Driving around Phoenix from game to game — one Spring Training site to another — was exciting enough to distract my six-year-old (excuse me, six and a half) from the monotany of PHX traffic. But the 350-mile hauls from San Diego to Phoenix and back required plenty of snacks.

Fortunately, Mrs. WTP stocked the car for her boys.

Earliesh on the homeward journey, my son dug into the individually bagged Planters mix called “Nut-rition.” Don’t boo me; I didn’t name it.

There are five different nuts featured — an exotic car snack, indeed — including the walnut. Have you ever met a child who likes walnuts?

“Will you take this one, Dad?”

And so the routine began.

“Another bad one, Dad.”

Somewhere along the I-8, I had a flashback to handing off walnuts to my father when I was around my son’s age. Almonds and cashews are the kings of mixed nuts. Walnuts are a father’s responsibility.

“Another bad one, Dad.”

The greatest lesson I learned this past weekend is that walnuts are never given away; they’re stashed and deposited, salted and stored in a dimension not for human comprehension, only to be returned decades later by an agent from the future bearing your last name.

The Padres and Dodgers played in Seoul, Korea, on March 20-21 of last year. Waking up at three in the morning to watch baseball is an unexpected way of marking time. I’m reminded of the pace of the game. The pitch clock moves things along at a hurried pace. Imanaga works quickly even as he walks the first two batters of the second inning. The Tokyo Dome crowd seems relatively quiet in the background of the broadcast. With the rest of the family asleep upstairs — it’s 3:34 am, after all — I’ve got the volume turned down lower than usual. Imanaga works around two walks to start the inning and escapes unscathed. I think it’s time for my first cup of coffee.

Matt Shaw, making his MLB debut, digs in to start the bottom of the second. Shaw was the Cubs’ first-round pick in 2023. He, like the White Sox Opening Day starter Sean Burke, is a product of the University of Maryland. Shaw hits a soft one-hopper up the middle that may have been a base hit in a time before shifting was commonplace. Instead it’s an easy out.

A few batters later, Miguel Amaya doubles towards right-center and drives in Dansby Swanson, who had reached on a single. It’s 1-0, Cubs. I imagine the Dodgers’ bloggers are already questioning the four-year extension recently handed out to manager Dave Roberts.

Ohtani and Imanaga meet for the second time in the top of the third. While we’re marking time through very early morning baseball, let’s consider how the last 365 days have been for Ippei Mizuhara. One year ago, as far as we knew, Mizuhara was just Ohtani’s interpreter. Now he’s staring at 57 months in federal prison for helping himself to $17 million from his friend’s bank account. He also owes about $18 million in restitution. Not a great year for Mizuhara, as we move to the bottom of the inning.

“Another bad one, Dad.”

Imanaga walks his way in and out of another inning, stranding two but still not allowing a hit through four innings.

With the start of the 2025 season, it’s time to purge a couple lingering thoughts from the offseason. I’m still shocked at how vocal the Dodgers were regarding the flawed Yankees defense. In the aftermath of last year’s World Series, reliever Joe Kelly and utility man Chris Taylor — at different times — spoke out about trusting that the Yankees would eventually fail to execute defensively. Taylor made his comments on Mookie Betts’ podcast. I’ve never heard a team unabashedly ridicule the opponent, going so far as to single out specific players. These Dodgers are confident, cocky, and emboldened.

On the flip side, even Dave Roberts admitted that the Padres were the best team they faced last October. “From my perspective, that was the World Series,” Roberts shared on Betts’ podcast. Nobody disagreed.

Storylines usually generated and perpetuated by talk radio were created by the World Series winners. Strange way to spend an offseason.

“Another bad one, Dad.”

It’s the top of the fifth, and the Cubs have gone to the bullpen. Imanaga’s day is done after four innings, 69 pitches, four walks, two strikeouts, and no hits. Reliever Ben Brown enters the game and promptly strikes out Rojas before walking Andy Pages.

Ohtani hammers a hanging offspeed pitch into right field for the Dodgers’ first hit of the season. Tommy Edman singles one pitch later. Tie game.

A potential double play ball off the bat of Teoscar Hernandez is thrown away by second baseman Jon Berti. Edman was nearly safe at second on the force play; his presence impacted Berti’s throwing mechanics. Ohtani scores.

The Dodgers lineup — even without Betts and Freeman — doesn’t let up. Will Smith drives home the third run of the inning. Like it or not, this is what’s supposed to happen when an offense gets into a team’s middle relief. Imanaga would still be pitching if it weren’t the middle of March. To call the Dodgers opportunistic might sound like I want to overlook their collective talent, so let’s acknowledge today that this team is both supremely gifted and patiently industrious.

With a 3-1 lead, Yamamoto sets down the first two Cubs batters in the fifth on two pitches. He strikes out Happ, retiring the side in order. It’ll be fun to see how Roberts navigates the final four innings with a two-run lead. Yamamoto has induced nine ground balls so far and retired nine in a row.

Another throwing error by the Cubs infield — this one by rookie third baseman Shaw after a nice play with the glove — and the Dodgers have a two-out RBI opportunity. Brown is still on the mound for Chicago. There are no easy innings against this lineup.

A four-pitch walk to Pages turns the lineup over. Ohtani steps in for the fourth time. Brown gets him chasing a hard curveball and eliminates the threat. Yamamoto’s day is done, as Anthony Banda enters from the Dodgers’ bullpen.

I’m fascinated with Banda because of the pitcher he’s become. At the trade deadline in 2014, I was with the D-backs when we sent Gerardo Parra to Milwaukee in exchange for two prospects: Mitch Haniger and Banda. Last year, the Dodgers became Banda’s eighth Major League team in eight years. He set a career high in games and innings pitched and established himself as a legitimate big league reliever. Banda begins his 2025 campaign by setting down the heart of the Cubs lineup in order. We’ll have to revisit him later this season.

Ben Brown is out to begin a third inning of work. He makes it through two-thirds of the seventh before giving way to Eli Morgan, who retires Max Muncy on one pitch. It’s stretch time in Tokyo!

With one out in the top of the eighth, we have a delay. At 5:10 in the morning. A fan with a laser pointer has caused a distraction. Glad to see Dodger Stadium culture has made its way east.

It’s the top of the eighth and my coffee maker beeps to let me know that it’s been on for two hours and needs a break. Today’s brew is courtesy of Ryan Woldt, a friend I’ve made through the Substack platform. You’ve heard of and from him before in this space. In addition to educating readers about coffee and covering the world of coffee professionals, he now has his hand in the roasting. The Yeah, No… Yeah blend has powered this story. It’s a smooth, lighter-bodied coffee that reflects the midwestern sensibilities of Woldt and his roasting partners. Cubs fans and Brewers fans may not agree on much, but there’s no need to fight over this coffee. I don’t know what they’re pouring in the Chicago clubhouse today, but they might want to go with something stronger before tomorrow’s game.

Ohtani greets former teammate Ryan Brasier with a double to lead off the ninth. There’s been little action since the Dodgers’ three-run fifth, but the World Champs are threatening to tack on an insurance run.

Edman does what Edman does and advances Ohtani on a ground ball to the right side. Teoscar Hernandez singles the run home. 4-1, Dodgers. With two on and one out for LA, the broadcast shows Tanner Scott standing, presumably ready to enter, in the Dodgers’ bullpen.

Scott gets some defensive help from new Dodgers outfield Michael Conforto, who inked a one-year, $17 million deal in December. Jerry Krause, the late GM of the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls, once told me that, every offseason, he wanted to acquire a veteran player who had never won a championship. The returning players, he found, were motivated to win for their new teammate. Conforto feels like that kind of player for Los Angeles.

Scott strikes out Shaw, who will have to wait for another day to record his first Major League base hit, and the Dodgers win, 4-1. The Japanese pitchers throw nine innings of one-run ball. The season has begun.