GLENDALE, Ariz. — The Los Angeles Dodgers are back at the beginning, preparing once again to climb the mountain that is the major-league season, sights set squarely on adding to this golden era for the franchise.
The Friday, Feb. 13, report date for Dodgers pitchers and catchers was the latest of any team league-wide, an appropriately delayed start after the Dodgers’ championship run stretched into November. And unlike the previous two years, when the Dodgers opened the season with series in Seoul and Tokyo, the team will stay grounded on the west side of Phoenix this spring, affording a bit more wiggle room to ease into camp activities, rather than needing to arrive early and expedite the preparation process.
“First day, good,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Getting the pitchers, catchers here, majority of the position players are here already. Guys are anxious. I think for me, we got a long camp, longer than we've had in recent years. So to try to get guys to start slow but intentional, methodical … is kind of the message.”
While the World Baseball Classic will add a wrinkle for a handful of Dodgers stars, the vast majority of the roster is embarking on a more normal spring training leading up to Opening Day against the D-backs on March 26 at Dodger Stadium. Granted, little is normal about even the most average day at Camelback Ranch, the spring training home of MLB’s supervillains and superheroes, a gobsmacking collection of baseballing talent that only grows each year.
A large banner touting Los Angeles’ status as “BACK-TO-BACK WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS” now adorns the chain-link fence looming over the bullpen mounds. A full week before the Cactus League slate begins, hordes of fans swarmed the backfields Friday in hopes of catching their favorite Dodgers in action, if even in low-intensity practice settings. As each player emerged from the facility to make his way down to the fields, crowds erupted, offering expressions of adoration and appreciation for the team that has given them so much to cheer about across consecutive title runs.
The specifics of what was happening on each field seemed to matter less than the fact that it was happening at all — baseball is back, bringing a breath of fresh air after a long winter. But Friday did offer a particularly intriguing sampling of backfield activity, at least by mid-February standards: Shohei Ohtani threw a bullpen, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto threw live batting practice.
The duo is in their third spring together, and the buzz around their presence in Glendale has grown each year as the two have achieved more and more while wearing Dodger blue. Ohtani is entering his first fully healthy spring with the Dodgers, gearing up to put his unprecedented two-way abilities on full display from the get-go in 2026. Yamamoto is only a few months removed from one of the most legendary pitching performances in World Series history, earning an almost mythical aura that now follows him in perpetuity. Perhaps more pertinently, both stars are ramping up to represent Japan in the World Baseball Classic, adding a level of urgency to their early camp activities that most of their teammates don’t feel quite yet.
Along with USA’s Will Smith, Puerto Rico’s Edwin Diaz (reminder: he’s on the Dodgers now) and Korea’s Hyeseong Kim, Ohtani and Yamamoto are two of the five players in Dodgers camp slated to participate in the upcoming international tournament. Japan’s pool-play games will be in Tokyo, with its first official game on March 6 and five pre-tournament friendlies against NPB clubs beginning Feb. 22. Roberts said Friday that he’s unsure when exactly the duo will make the trip back to Japan. But it stands to reason it will be at least a few days before Smith and Diaz will need to depart to join their national teams, whose training will commence in early March. As such, the time spent in Arizona is especially crucial for the two Japanese stars.
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Yamamoto faced Smith and Kim for a few at-bats each in his live batting practice session Friday, coaxing some weak contact from Kim and a swing-and-miss from Smith on a running two-seam fastball that had the All-Star catcher shaking his head in disbelief. Yamamoto looked as dialed in as ever, his picturesque mechanics unfolding in perfect sequence to unleash pitches to the location of his choosing. It was an infinitely lower-stakes setting than his most recent on-mound experience, but it was Yamamoto all the same. To that end, it’s impossible to watch him now without recalling the unfathomable feats of pitching endurance he displayed in the Fall Classic. Yet Roberts isn’t worried about a lingering hangover from the right-hander’s rare workload last postseason, even as Yamamoto builds back up to participate in the WBC.
“I just believe that he knows his limitations, and he's prepared,” Roberts said. “So I'm not too concerned.”
Earlier Friday, it was Ohtani’s turn to take the mound, albeit not against hitters. His bullpen took place right alongside Diaz, who was making his first high-intensity tosses in his new threads. Unlike Yamamoto, Ohtani is not preparing to pitch in the World Baseball Classic — he will DH only for Team Japan — but that doesn’t lessen the hype for Ohtani’s first full season in the Dodgers’ rotation. Roberts was not shy about his expectations for what Ohtani The Pitcher is capable of now that he’s further removed from his second elbow surgery.
“I think there's certainly a lot more in there,” the manager said. “And regardless of my expectations for him, his are going to exceed those. And I think it's fair to say he expects to be in the Cy Young conversation. But we just want him to be healthy and make starts, and all the numbers and statistics will take care of themselves.”
Asked whether the league’s top pitching honor is indeed a personal target, Ohtani didn’t confirm his ambitions but acknowledged it could be in the cards if he’s able to stay on the mound.
“If in the end the result is getting a Cy Young, that's great,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “Getting a Cy Young means just being able to throw more innings and pitch throughout the whole season. So if that's the end result, that's a good sign for me. That's what I'm more focused on — just being healthy the whole year.”
Redirecting the focus to his durability might sound like a way to downplay his ambition, but it’s also rooted in reality. The closest Ohtani has come to winning a Cy Young was during his healthiest campaign in 2022, when he threw a career-high 166 innings. He ultimately settled for fourth that year (and second in MVP voting), but it’s a reminder that his potential as a pitcher should not be discounted whatsoever. For all the prolific power-speed exploits Ohtani has demonstrated as a hitter, entering 2026, he seems eager to seize on his currently prime physical condition and remind everyone what he’s capable of on the mound.
“Everything he does is with purpose,” Roberts said. “So I'm really excited to see — with the full offseason to just prepare and not rehab — what he can do this year.”