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Shohei Ohtani, center, gestures to teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, left, as Roki Sasaki looks on during a press conference. All three have joined the Dodgers since the 2023 season ended. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Andrew Friedman remembers the talent, the crowd and maybe most of all, the hats.
In February 2023, in the lead-up to the most anticipated World Baseball Classic to date, the Dodgers president of baseball operations accompanied team scouts and executives on a trip to Japan to get an in-person look at the nation’s Samurai Japan national team.
For years the Dodgers had been scouting the improving talent coming out of the country, recognizing that a pipeline of potential major league stars was being cultivated in its rich baseball culture.
While he sat at the Hinata Sun Marine Stadium in Miyazaki, observing nothing more than bullpens and batting practices, Friedman was struck by the scene.
On the field he watched pitchers take the mound in groups of four, each one seemingly pumping high-velocity fastballs and eye-popping breaking pitches with stunningly consistent ease.
Read more:Dodgers' Tokyo Series trip confirms the team's 'overwhelming' hold on Japan
In the stands, Friedman was struck by the roughly 20,000 spectators that flocked to the workout, getting a clear reminder of “just how passionate they are about baseball.”
As Friedman scanned the seats, he made another observation: Many fans wore hats of MLB clubs.
“You’d see a Padre hat, a Yankees hat, a Red Sox hat, a Cubs hat, a Rangers hat, a Dodgers hat,” he recalled this spring. “And it got us thinking about an incredible potential opportunity.”
What if, Friedman and fellow executives wondered, the Dodgers could corner the market on top Japanese talent? What if they made themselves Japan’s most popular MLB team?
The Dodgers already were contemplating how to approach Shohei Ohtani’s upcoming free agency. They had long been scouting Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki, preparing to pursue each pitcher once they were posted for MLB teams to sign.
Now, they had visions of what Friedman termed a “dream scenario.”
Sign all three. And in the process, effectively “paint Japan blue.”
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Fans stop for photos at the entrance plaza of the Tokyo Dome as they arrive to watch the Dodgers work out Friday. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“It was something that I think we envisioned and dreamed of and hoped,” said Galen Carr, who as the Dodgers’ vice president of player personnel has been a central figure in their overseas scouting.
Two years later those grand plans have become a reality. Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki are Dodgers — adding the latter after the former pair helped the team win the World Series last year. And a Japanese fan base once divided has coalesced around its interest in the Dodgers, who arrived in Tokyo last week for their season-opening series against the Chicago Cubs as if they are the home team.
“In 2022, it wasn’t that easy to find a Dodger hat, but more because they weren’t in stock by the volume,” Friedman said.
But over the last year, he quipped: “They weren’t in stock that much — because they kept selling out.”
Long before the Dodgers got Ohtani or their other current stars, they began gaining popularity in Japan’s baseball culture.
It started in 1995, when Hideo Nomo became the first Japanese star to permanently move to Major League Baseball. That career began in controversy, with the pitcher having to exploit a contract loophole with his Japanese team in order to sign with the Dodgers. But it opened the door for others to follow in his footsteps. And more players, particularly pitchers — such as Hiroki Kuroda, Kenta Maeda and Yu Darvish — made a home at Chavez Ravine.
“For this particular organization, there is a historical and inherent appeal in Asia,” Carr said, also noting the Dodgers’ connections in South Korea with pitchers Chan Ho Park and Hyun-Jin Ryu. “I think a lot of us felt strongly about trying to revitalize that; that brand, that excitement for the Dodgers.”
So, over the last several years, the team began dedicating more and more resources to its scouting in the Pacific Rim. And by that point, Yamamoto (a three-time most valuable player in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league) and Sasaki (a longtime scouting darling who’d been throwing 100 mph since high school) already were emerging as two of their top targets — coinciding with Ohtani’s upcoming free agency in MLB.
“For us,” Friedman said, “a major win would have been to get two.”
But in their pursuit of painting Japan blue, they held out hope of landing all three.
Read more:Hernández: Tokyo Series atmosphere shows Shohei Ohtani is more than 'a representative of Japan'
Like with most Japanese players, scouting Yamamoto and Sasaki was a nuanced process. MLB officials got virtually no direct access to either since they were still under contract with their Japanese clubs. So when Dodgers officials such as Carr, Asian Pacific scouting director Jon Deeble and others in the international scouting department embarked on trips to see them — Carr estimates he went to Japan roughly 20 times over the last two years — they focused on accomplishing two main purposes.
One: to gather information with both their eyes (by watching games, practices and team workouts) and ears (by collecting more personal nuggets from sources connected to either the player or team).
“That is very similar to what we’d go through here [with domestic draft prospects],” Carr noted.
Two: to simply be seen and “make it known you’re making the effort” to be present.
“As it happens, you kind of stand out when you go over there,” Carr said. “These players, rightfully so, they’re not accessible to us. And for good reason. They’re on someone else’s team. But when you are in the stadium watching, as someone who has made the trip over from the States, that typically garners some attention with the media over there.”
“It’s a little bit embarrassing,” Carr added with a laugh. “Even when I’m over there, there’s all these pictures. But you know that’s making some kind of impression.”
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An electronic billboard spanning nearly a city block features advertising starring Shohei Ohtani near the Tokyo Dome — a sign of how much Ohtani and the Dodgers have become something of a de facto home team in Japan. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
As last offseason approached and the Dodgers began crafting their free-agent pitches for Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki (who some around the sport thought might be posted to MLB after the 2023 season), there was still one dynamic they couldn’t be certain of.
There was an industry belief that Japanese stars preferred to not play on the same MLB teams. And while the Dodgers had their doubts about that theory — to Friedman, it didn’t square with the camaraderie he witnessed from Japan’s victorious 2023 WBC team — they remained wary of the unknown deep into their discussions with Ohtani and Yamamoto.
“Going through the process with Yoshinobu and Shohei, and asking the question of, ‘How comfortable would you be to play with the other,’ the answers were positive,” Friedman recalled. “But we still weren’t sure what that meant.”
After Ohtani signed his unprecedented $700-million deal in December 2023, he immediately went to work on recruiting Yamamoto. And when those efforts resulted in another record-breaking $325-million agreement — giving Yamamoto the largest contract in MLB history for a pitcher outside of Ohtani — the Dodgers turned their sights toward Sasaki the following offseason.
Their dreams of painting Japan blue were coming true.
He’s become the agent of many Japanese players in recent years, representing Darvish, Kodai Senga, Seiya Suzuki and Yamamoto too.
But even Joel Wolfe, the executive vice president and managing executive of baseball at Wasserman Media Group, couldn’t help but notice the way things changed in Japan once Ohtani and Yamamoto joined the Dodgers.
Every single game, he noted, was broadcast live on television in the morning — a 7 p.m. start in Los Angeles, for example, is on at 11 a.m. in Japan — and rerun in the evening. At almost every Japanese stadium there would be pop-up shops selling gear for three teams: the home team, the road team and the Dodgers.
It led Wolfe to make a resounding observation this offseason, when he said “the Dodgers do have a home-field advantage in Japan.”
“They’re everywhere,” he said. “All the players and fans see the Dodgers every day, so it’s always in their mind, because of Ohtani and Yamamoto.”
And when it came to Sasaki — Wolfe’s latest star Japanese client — that influence seemingly applied once again.
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Dodgers teammates Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto celebrate winning the World Series at Yankee Stadium last October. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers were considered front-runners throughout his free agency. And while two other finalists, the San Diego Padres and Toronto Blue Jays, made late pushes, his decision to sign in Los Angeles surprised almost no one in the industry.
“Getting Shohei and Yoshinobu,” Carr said, “I think really helped set the table for Roki.”
The Dodgers cite other reasons for their ability to land Sasaki — who will make his MLB debut Wednesday in Tokyo, following Yamamoto as the team’s second starter during their season-opening series against the Chicago Cubs.
Friedman noted the “don’t assume anything” ethos to the club’s recruiting pitches — a style forged through past, often unsuccessful bids for such players, including Ohtani when he first came over from Japan in 2017.
Carr, meanwhile, also pointed to the years of scouting information the club collected on Sasaki, knowledge that proved crucial when the pitcher presented interested teams with a “homework assignment” that solicited ideas on how he could reverse a dip in fastball velocity that plagued him last year.
“There’s a ton of value in being able to source that information, and look back to [what was working] two years before when his velocity was up,” Carr said. “We had people to do that. You can’t just ask anyone.”
Still, when asked this week how the Dodgers’ popularity in Japan changed last year in the wake of Ohtani and Yamamoto signing in L.A., Sasaki noted how often he saw them on TV and how much attention their run to the World Series generated.
“That made their presence even greater,” he said in Japanese.
The Dodgers’ hope is for that same dynamic to apply to future waves of prospects coming out of Japan — with Ohtani, Yamamoto and Sasaki, in the view of team evaluators, serving as the forebearers of a potential golden generation of Japanese baseball.
“If you ask me about the next five years in Japan, I could name at least three really interesting names that we’re going to be looking at moving forward and have our eyes on,” Carr said.
“In our ideal world,” Friedman added, “kids are growing up in Japan, watching Dodger games, being a fan of the team. And when they have a decision to make, that gives us some advantage in the process.”
Time will tell exactly how impactful the Dodgers’ popularity surge proves to be. As even Wolfe noted, “every player is an individual and sees the world through his lens and his background and upbringing.”
“Yoshinobu and Roki,” he added, “chose the Dodgers for very different reasons.”
Read more:'I haven't given my Japanese side its due': Dave Roberts reflects ahead of Dodgers' Tokyo opener
Still, early in this week’s trip to Tokyo, the team has seen one sign of its popularity after another — including at yet another well-attended workout Friday at the Tokyo Dome.
Just like Friedman’s trip to see Team Japan two years earlier, the Dodgers’ practice attracted fans by the thousands (10,507 to be exact, a capacity ticket allotment that sold out in an hour). They cheered for batting practice, baserunning drills and sessions of catch in the outfield.
This time, however, there was no question about which team was best represented. As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but Dodgers swag and waves of blue.
“There’s gonna be a lot of representation for the Dodgers,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think our mission was accomplished, painting the country of Japan blue.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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