The Tokyo Dome was already shaking before the second inning ended. Thousands of fans — most of them wearing the white and navy of Samurai Japan, many of them holding up giant Ohtani face cut-outs that had become a kind of unofficial national currency — erupted the moment the ball left Shohei Ohtani’s bat and disappeared over the right-field wall.
He’d just drilled a grand slam off a curveball from Chen Hao-Chun, 102-plus mph off the barrel. The kind of contact that doesn’t sound like a baseball being hit so much as an announcement. Japan’s 10-run second inning — a new WBC record — had begun, and a 13-0 mercy-rule obliteration of Chinese Taipei would follow.
Two weeks later, Ohtani would watch Japan’s bullpen blow an 8-5 lead against Venezuela in the quarterfinals. The defending champions were out. The best player in the world left the tournament with a .462 average, three home runs, and seven RBI — and a suitcase full of heartbreak.
That, in compressed form, is what the 2026 World Baseball Classic did to Dodgers players. Elevated some, humbled others, broke a few hearts, and sent one legend home with his legacy sealed. Sure, they will now return to Tinseltown, where online betting sites are tipping a famous three-peat: The latest odds from Ozoon Sportsbook make the reigning World Series champions a clear +225 favorite to claim a third straight title. But how did each of them perform on the global stage? Let’s take a look.
Shohei Ohtani
Before that opening game, Shohei Ohtani hit ten balls out of the park in batting practice. During the game, he doubled on the first pitch he saw, then hit a grand slam and an RBI single in the same inning.
His full WBC line — .462 average, 3 HR, 7 RBI — doesn’t even properly communicate the dominance. Against Venezuela in the quarterfinals, he led off with a home run, making him and Ronald Acuña Jr. the first pair of former WBC MVPs to hit leadoff homers in the same WBC game. The tournament MVP case was airtight. Then the bullpen happened. An 8-5 lead vanished. Defending champions Japan were dumped out. And Ohtani — who finished with a pair of strikeouts in his final three at-bats — absorbed the silence of the clubhouse while Venezuela celebrated.
Don’t let Japan’s shock exit diminish what he did. If anything, it crystallizes it. He was the only reason Japan was in that quarterfinal comfortably; he was the only thing standing between Samurai Japan’s dynasty and early disaster. His supporting cast couldn’t hold serve. That’s not on him.
Grade: A
Will Smith
By mid-tournament, Cal Raleigh was 0-for-9. Three games. Not a sniff. Manager Mark DeRosa decided to make it, and he made it without hesitation: Will Smith gets the mask.
What followed was the quietest indispensable performance of the 2026 WBC. Smith steered six pitchers through the Dominican Republic’s loaded lineup in a knockout-round game that ended 4-1, surrendering just one run. Afterward, pitcher David Bednar didn’t talk about his slider or his velocity. He talked about his catcher. “I think Will called a great game all night,” Bednar told FS1’s Tom Verducci. “Just a lot of trust in him.”
Then came the controversy that’s still being debated on baseball Twitter. With the count full in the ninth, Mason Miller threw a slider low — genuinely low — and umpire Cory Blaser rang up Geraldo Perdomo to end the inning. The Dominican Republic was furious. Perdomo said he knew it was a ball before his bat shoulder even dropped. The reality is that pitch-framing at the elite level is indistinguishable from deception — it’s the art of making a borderline pitch look inevitable — and Smith is one of the best in the business at it.
His bat hit .200 with one HR and one RBI — honest, not spectacular — and that alone separates this grade from A territory. But the defensive value, the game-calling credibility, the pitcher trust? USA went 5-1 to the WBC final with Smith as its foundation.
Grade: B+
Edwin Díaz
Here’s what Edwin Díaz did in 2023: he threw a perfect WBC with Puerto Rico, celebrated the win by jumping into a dogpile on the field, and tore his patellar tendon in the chaos. Surgery. Rehab. An entire season spent watching the game from the dugout. When he finally got back to the mound for the Dodgers in 2025, he was dominant again — but this WBC meant something different. This was unfinished business.
Three innings pitched. Seven strikeouts. Zero runs allowed. The trumpet played. Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” blared through the Puerto Rico clubhouse entrance. The thousands in attendance who hadn’t seen this version of Díaz since before the injury got a reminder. The version that makes cleanup hitters look foolish. The version the Dodgers are paying to close October games.
Puerto Rico bowed out in the knockout round. Díaz’s dominance went unrewarded. That is the reliever’s particular hell, the knowledge that you can be perfect and still lose, because you only control your three innings, and other guys control the other six. He handled it with grace.
Grade: B+
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
The first start was clean. Two-and-two-thirds hitless innings against Chinese Taipei in that blowout, the kind of precision work that reminds you why the Dodgers spent $325 million on this right arm. He looked like an ace. He looked like Japan’s anchor.
Venezuela had other ideas.
Four innings, two runs allowed in the quarterfinal — not catastrophic numbers on paper. But then the bullpen came undone. Wilyer Abreu got his pitch. The lead evaporated. Japan’s title defense — which the entire tournament had essentially assumed was a formality — was over before anyone had time to recalibrate.
Yamamoto did his job. He didn’t cost Japan the game. But there’s a version of this tournament where he goes deeper into starts, where he wills Japan into the semifinals on ace stuff, and that version didn’t materialize.
Grade: B-
Hyeseong Kim
He hit a home run in pool play, and the South Korean media reacted like it was the second coming. After Hyeseong Kim’s electric Dodgers debut season — contact skills, blazing speed, the kind of spring training that earns you a roster spot — expectations for him at this WBC were legitimately high.
Then the hand happened. Not serious, per the official reports — but serious enough that Kim missed the crucial final pool game, the one that could’ve shaped Korea’s bracket position. He came back. It wasn’t enough. Korea absorbed a 10-0 annihilation at the hands of the Dominican Republic in the knockout round, and that was that.
Grade: C+
Clayton Kershaw
Clayton Kershaw told reporters that if that exhibition appearance against the Colorado Rockies was his final mound appearance, “it was worth it.” DeRosa confirmed he’d pitch at some point in the tournament proper. He did — covering innings, not winning games. USA’s 5-1 finals march was built on Smith and the bullpen, not Kershaw’s left arm. But nobody needed it to be. The man won three Cy Youngs, an MVP, three World Series rings, and pitched 18 seasons in Dodger blue. He doesn’t owe baseball anything. He came back anyway — for the country, for the moment, for the story.
Grade: C
