After a long and eventful offseason, the MLB regular season is finally among us. The reigning World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers — who roster Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani and recently signed his compatriot, Roki Sasaki, in arguably free agency’s biggest move — will open the season with a matchup against Shota Imanaga and the Chicago Cubs on 6 a.m. ET (7 p.m. local time) on Tuesday. The game will take place at the Tokyo Dome in the heart of the world’s largest city.
The matchups are highly-anticipated — per the Los Angeles Times, the cheapest tickets are going for more than $1,000 each — in the baseball-crazed country. The Dodgers will roll out two Japanese pitchers for the series — Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Tuesday and Sasaki on Wednesday, with Ohtani not expected to join the rotation until May.
Los Angeles is a 1.5-run favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-162 on the Moneyline) and the run total is set for 7.5. Meanwhile, the Cubs are +136 on the Moneyline.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto O1.5 Walks Allowed (-130)
The 25-year-old, who signed a record 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers prior to the 2024 season, had an excellent first campaign in the United States, going 7-2 with a 3.00 ERA and 1.7 Wins Above Replacement (WAR), and he was a critical aspect of the team’s championship run, giving up just one hit in 6.1 innings of a Game 2 win. Los Angeles bolstered its already-stacked pitching room by adding 2023 NL Cy Young winner Blake Snell and Sasaki, as well as Ohtani’s imminent return to the rotation, but Yamamoto is still expected to play a major role. A potential area for improvement is his control; he would’ve finished in the league’s top 10 in most metrics if he’d thrown enough innings to qualify, but he’d have ranked just 18th in walks per nine innings, and his rate of 2.1 walks per nine innings has been only the sixth-best among 13 qualified pitchers so far in the preseason.
If that sounds like pedantry, it probably is, since there aren’t many flaws in Yamamoto’s game. But while Chicago had a rough season, finishing just 83-79 and missing the playoffs, it did excel at getting aboard, finishing sixth in walks and 10th in on-base percentage in 2024. Yamamoto also recorded two or more walks in two of his final three regular season games and two of his four postseason games. I’m not sure if he’ll be nervous in his first-ever MLB game on Japanese soil, but in his regular-season debut in South Korea last season, he gave up a walk and five runs in just one inning against the San Diego Padres, so it’s possible that he’ll be less clinical than usual in his season opener.
Chicago Cubs: Team Total Runs – 1st 3 Innings U0.5 (+100)
Even if Yamamoto gives up two walks at some point during what is likely to be a five-inning outing, that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll give up a run. Last season, the Dodgers as a team allowed just a .241 batting average with runners on base, the sixth-best in baseball, and 1.22 walks and hits per innings pitched (WHIP), the 11th-lowest. Individually, Yamamoto was excellent at getting himself out of jams, with a 1.03 WHIP and a .217 opponent batting average with runners on base. There were seven games among Yoshinobu’s 18 regular-season starts last season in which he had not conceded a run in the first three innings.
The Cubs did provide Imanaga with plenty of run support last season, though. Chicago scored 5.48 runs per game when Imanaga was on the mound, a figure that would’ve led the league across a full season. But several of those runs came late in the game; in 2024, the Cubs ranked just 13th in runs scored in the game’s first six innings and ninth from the seventh inning onwards. Plus, it’s early in the season, and the teams are not fully ramped up for the regular season yet; it’s equally likely that Chicago’s hitters are not yet in-form as it is that Yoshinobu exhibits rust.
Shohei Ohtani 1+ Home Runs (+240)
Admittedly, the odds on this one aren’t incredible. But you know who is incredible? The man who has finished in the top two in MVP voting in each of the last four years and won the award in three of them, receiving the award unanimously despite not even doing what he arguably does best — pitching. Ohtani has a flair for big moments — his 6-6, three-homer, 10-RBI performance on September 19 to clinch the first 50-homer, 50-steal season in MLB history comes to mind immediately — and there’s hardly a bigger moment for him than a regular-season game in front of thousands of adoring fans in his home country. In Saturday’s exhibition game against the Yomiuri Giants — the Tokyo Dome’s regular tenants — Ohtani belted a homer to deep right in the third inning.
Imanaga was tremendous in his rookie season last year and rightfully finished fifth in NL Cy Young voting. After an eight-year career in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), in which he recorded a 3.18 ERA and was a two-time All-Star, Imanaga made the move to the Windy City and went 15-3 with a 2.91 ERA. But his critical flaw is his propensity for the long ball — after giving up 0.9 home runs per nine innings in Japan, he allowed 27 in just 173.1 MLB innings last season, tied for the 10th-most among 58 qualified pitchers. Although Ohtani only hit 12 of his 54 regular-season home runs in 2024 against left-handed pitchers like Imanaga, he still slashed a very respectable .288/.349/.518 against southpaws, and if he doesn’t manage to take Imanaga deep, all seven of the Cubs’ relievers are right-handed.
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