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We’re past due to hand out some midseason grades, so let’s hand out some midseason grades.

As we pass the 90-game mark in the 2025 MLB season, my team of the first half isn’t the well-rounded Detroit Tigers, who do get our highest grade for owning MLB’s best record, or the explosive Chicago Cubs or Shohei Ohtani‘s Los Angeles Dodgers, but a team most baseball fans love to hate: the Houston Astros. They lost their two best players from last season and their best hitter has been injured — and they’re playing their best baseball since they won the 2022 World Series.

Let’s get to the grades. As always, we’re grading off preseason expectations, factoring in win-loss record and quality of performance, while looking at other positive performances and injuries.

Jump to a team:

AL East: BAL | BOS | NYY | TB | TOR
AL Central: CHW | CLE | DET | KC | MIN
AL West: ATH | HOU | LAA | SEA | TEX

NL East: ATL | MIA | NYM | PHI | WSH
NL Central: CHC | CIN | MIL | PIT | STL
NL West: ARI | COL | LAD | SD | SF

Tarik Skubal is obviously the headline act, but the Tigers are winning with impressive depth across the entire roster.

Javier Baez is putting together a remarkable comeback season after a couple of abysmal years and will become the first player to start an All-Star Game at both shortstop and in the outfield. Former No. 1 overall picks Casey Mize and Spencer Torkelson have put together their own comeback stories, while Riley Greene has matured into one of the game’s top power hitters.

Given their deep well of prospects and contributors at the MLB level, no team is better positioned than the Tigers to add significant help at the trade deadline.


I heard someone refer to them as the Zombie Astros, which feels apropos. Alex Bregman left as a free agent, they traded Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez has been injured and has just three home runs, and the Jose Altuve experiment in left field predictably fizzled.

But here they are, fighting for the best record in the majors and holding a comfortable lead in the AL West. They’re getting star turns from Hunter Brown, Framber Valdez and Jeremy Pena, while the risky decision to start Cam Smith in the majors with very little minor league experience has paid off, as he has now become their cleanup hitter.

If we ignore the COVID-19 season, the Astros look on their way to an eighth straight division title.


This could be at least a half-grade higher based on everything that has gone right: Pete Crow-Armstrong‘s attention-grabbing breakout, Tucker doing everything expected after the big trade, Seiya Suzuki‘s monster power numbers and Matthew Boyd‘s All-Star turn in the rotation. The Cubs are on pace for their most wins since their World Series title season in 2016.

There have been a few hiccups, however, especially in the rotation with Justin Steele‘s season-ending injury and Ben Brown‘s inconsistency, plus rookie third baseman Matt Shaw has scuffled, and the bench has been weak aside from their backup catchers.

Still, this is a powerhouse lineup, and the Cubs will seek to improve their rotation at the deadline.


They just keep winning of late, going from 25-27 and seven games behind the Yankees on May 25 to taking over first place from the slumping Bronx Bombers, a remarkable turnaround over just 36 games. They went 27-9 over a 36-game stretch ending with their eighth win in a row on Sunday.

George Springer‘s recent surge has been fun to watch, a reminder of how good he was at his peak, and Addison Barger has been mashing over the past two months.

Some of the stats don’t add up to the Blue Jays being this good — they’ve barely outscored their opponents — but there might be more offense in the tank from the likes of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a healthy Anthony Santander, and the bullpen, a soft spot, is the easiest area to upgrade.


Their success is best summed up by the fact that Freddy Peralta is their lone All-Star, but they have a whole bunch of players who have contributed between 1 and 2 WAR.

Brandon Woodruff looked good Sunday in his first start in nearly two years, so that could be a huge boost for the second half.

I’m curious to see how Jackson Chourio performs as well. While his counting stats — extra-base hits, RBIs — are fine, his triple-slash line remains below last season, especially his OBP. He had a huge second half in 2024 (.310/.363/.552), and if he does that again, the Brewers could find themselves back in the postseason for the seventh time in eight seasons.


The Rays started off slow, with a losing record through the end of April, but then went 33-22 in May and June to claw back into the AL East race — as the Rays usually do, last year being the recent exception.

Two key performers have been All-Star third baseman Junior Caminero, who has a chance to become just the third player to hit 40 home runs in his age-21 season, and All-Star first baseman Jonathan Aranda.

Due to the league wanting the Rays to play more home games early in the season, the July and August slate will be very road-heavy, so we’ll see how the Rays adapt to a difficult two-month stretch, especially since their pitching isn’t quite as deep as it has been in other seasons.


No, they’re not going to be the greatest team of all time. But they might win 100 games — even though Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki, their huge offseason acquisitions, have combined for just two wins in 10 starts.

The lineup, of course, has been terrific, with Ohtani leading the NL in several categories and Will Smith leading the batting race. By wRC+, it’s been the best offense in Dodgers history.

If they can get some combo of Snell, Sasaki and Tyler Glasnow healthy, plus Ohtani eventually ramped up to a bigger workload on the mound, the Dodgers still loom as World Series favorites.


They are on pace for 95 wins, mainly on the strength of Zack Wheeler, Ranger Suarez and Cristopher Sanchez, who are a combined 23-7 with 11.8 WAR. Jesus Luzardo‘s ERA is bloated due to that two-start stretch when he allowed 20 runs, but he has otherwise been solid as well.

But, overall, it hasn’t always been the smoothest of treks. The bullpen has imploded a few times and the offense has lacked power aside from Kyle Schwarber. Bryce Harper is back after missing three weeks, and they need to get his bat going. Look for some bullpen additions at the trade deadline — and perhaps an outfielder as well.


The Cardinals have been a minor surprise — perhaps even to the Cardinals themselves. St. Louis was viewing this as a rebuilding year of sorts — not that the Cardinals ever hit rock bottom and start completely over. They had a hot May, winning 12 of 13 at one point, but the offense has been fading of late, with those three straight shutout losses to Pittsburgh and six shutout losses since June 25.

The starting rotation doesn’t generate a lot of swing and miss, with both Erick Fedde and Miles Mikolas seeing their ERAs starting to climb. Brendan Donovan is the team’s only All-Star rep, and that kind of sums up this team: solid but without any star power. That might foretell a second-half fade.


All-Star starting pitchers Logan Webb and Robbie Ray, plus a dominant bullpen, have led the way, although after starting 12-4, the Giants have basically been a .500 team for close to three months now. Rafael Devers hasn’t yet ignited the offense since coming over from Boston, and the Giants have lost four 1-0 games.

These final three games at home against the Dodgers before the All-Star break will be a crucial series, as Los Angeles has slowly pulled away in the NL West.


This was an “A-plus” through June 12, when the Mets were 45-24 and owned the best record in baseball, even though Juan Soto hadn’t gotten hot. Soto finally got going in June, but the pitching collapsed, and the Mets went through a disastrous 1-10 stretch.

The rotation injuries have piled up, exacerbating the lack of bullpen depth. Recent games have been started by Justin Hagenman (who had a 6.21 ERA in Triple-A), journeyman reliever Chris Devenski, Paul Blackburn (7.71 ERA) and Frankie Montas, who has had to start even though he’s clearly not throwing the ball well. The Mets need to get the rotation healthy, but also could use more offense from Mark Vientos and their catchers (Francisco Alvarez was demoted to Triple-A).


At times it has felt like Cal Raleigh has been a one-man team with his record-breaking first half. But he will be joined on the All-Star squad by starting pitcher Bryan Woo, closer Andres Munoz and center fielder Julio Rodriguez, who made it on the strength of his defense, as his offense has been a disappointment.

The offense has been one of the best in the majors on the road, but the rotation has been nowhere near as effective as the past couple of seasons, with George Kirby, Logan Gilbert and Bryce Miller all missing time with injuries. They just shut out the Pirates three games in a row, so maybe that will get the rotation on a roll.


They’re just out of the wild-card picture while hanging around .500, so we give them a decent grade since that exceeds preseason expectations. It feels like a little bit of a mirage given their run differential — their record in one-run games (good) versus their record in blowout games (not good) — and various holes across the lineup and pitching staff.

But they’ve done two things to keep them in the race. One, they hit a lot of home runs. Two, they’re the only team in the majors to use just five starting pitchers. The rotation hasn’t been stellar, but it’s been stable.


The Padres are probably fortunate to be where they are, given some of their issues. As expected, the offensive depth has been a problem.

Not as expected, Dylan Cease has struggled while Michael King‘s injury after a strong start has left them without last year’s dynamic 1-2 punch at the top of the rotation (although Nick Pivetta has been one of the best signings of the offseason). Yu Darvish just made his season debut Monday, so hopefully he’ll provide a lift.

The Padres haven’t played well against the better teams, including a 2-5 record against the Dodgers, but they did clean up against the Athletics, Rockies and Pirates, going 16-2 against those three teams.


For now, the Reds are stuck in neutral. Leave out 2022, when they lost 100 games, and it’s otherwise been a string of .500-ish seasons: 31-29 in 2020, 83-79 in 2021, 82-80 in 2023, 77-85 in 2024 and now a similar record so far in 2025.

The hope was that Terry Francona would be a difference-maker. Maybe that will play out down the stretch, but the best hope is to get the rotation clicking on all cylinders at the same time. That means Andrew Abbott continuing his breakout performance, plus getting Hunter Greene healthy again and rookie Chase Burns to live up to the hype after a couple of shaky outings following an impressive MLB debut.

Throw in Nick Lodolo and solid Nick Martinez and Brady Singer, and this group can be good enough to pitch the Reds to their first full-season playoff appearance since 2013.


The Yankees have hit their annual midseason swoon — which has been subject to much intense analysis from their disgruntled fans — and that opening weekend sweep of the Brewers, when the Yankees’ torpedo bats were the big story in baseball, now seems long ago.

Going from seven up to three back in such a short time is a disaster — but not disastrous. Nonetheless, the Yankees will have to do some hard-core self-evaluation heading to the trade deadline.

The offense wasn’t going to be as good as it was in April, when Paul Goldschmidt, Trent Grisham and Ben Rice were all playing over their heads. So, do they need a hitter? Or with Clarke Schmidt now likely joining Gerrit Cole as a Tommy John casualty, do they need a starting pitcher? Or both?


From the book of “things we didn’t expect,” page 547: The Marlins are averaging more runs per game than the Orioles, Padres, Braves and Rangers, to name a few teams. They’re averaging almost as many runs per game as the Mets, and last time we checked, the Marlins weren’t the team to give Soto $765 million.

An eight-game winning streak at the end of June has the Marlins going toe-to-toe with the Braves for third place in the NL East even though the starting rotation has been a mess, with Sandy Alcantara on track to become just the fourth qualified pitcher with an ERA over 7.00.


Heading into the season, I thought that if any team was going to challenge the Dodgers in the NL West, it would be the Diamondbacks. The offense has once again been one of the best in the majors, but the pitching issues have been painful.

After the aggressive move to sign Corbin Burnes, he went down with Tommy John surgery after 11 starts. Meanwhile, Zac Gallen, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brandon Pfaadt each have an ERA on the wrong side of 5.00. Rodriguez was better in June before a shellacking on July 4, while Gallen remains homer-prone, so it’s hard to tell if improvement is on the horizon. Their playoff odds are hovering just under 20%, so there’s a chance, but they need to get red-hot like they did last July and August.


It feels like it has been more soap opera than baseball season in Boston, with the Devers drama finally ending with the shocking trade with the Giants.

If you give added weight that this is the Red Sox, a team that should be operating with the big boys in both budget and aspirations and instead seemed to only want to dump Devers’ contract, then feel free to lower this grade a couple of notches, even if the Red Sox are close in the wild-card standings.

On the field, the heralded rookie trio of Kristian Campbell, Roman Anthony and Marcelo Mayer hasn’t exactly clicked, with Campbell returning to the minors after posting a .902 OPS in April. A big test will come out of the All-Star break, when they play the Cubs, Phillies, Dodgers, Twins and Astros in a tough 15-game stretch.


After last season’s surprise playoff appearance, it’s been a frustrating 2025 — although I’m not sure this result is necessarily a surprise.

There were concerns about the offense heading into the season and those concerns have proven correct. They were getting no production from their outfield, so they rushed Jac Caglianone to the majors to much hype, but he has struggled and might need a reset back in Triple-A. Even Bobby Witt Jr., as good as he has been (on pace for 7.5 WAR), has seen his OPS drop 140 points.

On the bright side, Kris Bubic emerged as an All-Star starter and Noah Cameron has filled in nicely for the injured Cole Ragans, so maybe they trade a starter for some offense.


Coming off a catastrophic 2024 season, nobody was expecting anything from the White Sox. Indeed, another 121-loss season loomed as a possibility. While they’re on pace to lose 100 again, they’ve at least played more competitive baseball thanks to their pitching.

Rookie starters Shane Smith and Sean Burke have shown promise, while rookie position players Kyle Teel, Edgar Quero and now Colson Montgomery are getting their initial taste of the majors.

There has been the mix of calamity: Luis Robert Jr. has been unproductive and is probably now untradable, and former No. 3 overall pick Andrew Vaughn hit .189 and was traded to the Brewers.


The Twins are one organization that might like a do-over of the past five seasons. It feels like they’ve had the most talent in the division, but all they’ve done is squeeze out one soft division title in 2023. Now, the Tigers have passed them in talent and other factors, such as payroll flexibility.

There’s still time for the Twins to turn things around in 2025, but outside of that wonderful 13-game winning streak, they haven’t played winning baseball.


Overall, it’s been yet another bad season, despite Paul Skenes‘ brilliance. Really, do we talk enough about him? Yes, we do talk about him, but he has a 1.95 ERA through his first 42 career starts. Incredible.

Here’s an amazing thing about baseball. The Pirates are not a good team, but they recently put together one of the best six-game stretches in history. That’s not stretching the description. First, they swept the Mets — a good team — by scores of 9-1, 9-2 and 12-1. Then they swept the Cardinals — a good team — with three shutouts, 7-0, 1-0 and 5-0. They became the first team since at least 1901 to score 43 runs or more and allow four runs or fewer in a six-game stretch. And then they promptly got shut out three games in a row, making them the first to win three straight shutouts and then lose three straight shutouts.


Eighteen of our 28 voters picked them to win the AL West before the season, but it’s looking more and more like the 2023 World Series might be a stone-cold fluke in the middle of a string of losing seasons. That year, nearly everyone in the lineup had a career year at the plate, and the pitching got hot at the right time.

This year’s Rangers, though, have struggled to score runs, and while some have pointed to the offensive environment at Globe Life Field, they’re near the bottom in road OPS as well. It’s been fun seeing Jacob deGrom back at a dominating level, and Nathan Eovaldi should have been an All-Star.

Put it this way: If the Rangers can somehow squeeze into the postseason, you don’t want to face the Rangers in a short series. Indeed, if any team looms as an October upset special, it might be the Rangers.


The Nationals received superlative first-half performances from James Wood and MacKenzie Gore, while CJ Abrams is on the way to his best season. But there remains a lack of overall organizational progress, which finally led to the firings on Sunday of longtime GM Mike Rizzo and longtime manager Dave Martinez. A 7-19 record in June sealed their fate, as the rotation has been bad and the bullpen arguably the worst in baseball.

Until the Nationals figure out how to improve their pitching — or, better yet, find an owner who wants to win — they will be stuck going nowhere.


That fell apart in a hurry. Sunday’s loss was Cleveland’s 10th in a row, a stretch that remarkably included five shutouts. Indeed, the Guardians have now been shut out 11 times; the franchise record in the post-dead-ball-era (since 1920) is 20 shutouts in 1968.

There’s nothing worse than watching a team that can’t score runs, so that tells you how exciting the Guardians have been. Last year, the Guardians hit exceptionally well with runners in scoring position, keeping afloat what was otherwise a mediocre offense. That hasn’t happened in 2025 (trading Josh Naylor didn’t help either). Throw in some predictable regression from the bullpen, and this season looks lost.


We can’t give this a complete failing grade due to the emergence of All-Star shortstop Jacob Wilson (the Athletics’ first All-Star starter since Josh Donaldson in 2014) and slugging first baseman Nick Kurtz, who have a chance to finish 1-2 in the Rookie of the Year voting. Plus, we have Denzel Clarke‘s circus catches in center field.

But otherwise? Ugh. The Sacramento gamble already looks like a disaster, three months into a three-year stay. The team is drawing well below Sutter Health Park’s 14,000-seat capacity, with many recent games drawing under 10,000 fans. Luis Severino bashed the small crowds and the lack of air-conditioning.

The A’s had a groundbreaking ceremony for their new park in Vegas, renting heavy construction equipment as background props. Maybe they should have spent that money on more pitching help.


Based on preseason expectations, the Braves have clearly been the biggest disappointment in the National League — fighting the Orioles for most disappointing overall.

What’s gone wrong? They haven’t scored runs, as the offense continues its remarkable fade from a record-setting performance just two seasons ago. The collapses of Michael Harris II and Ozzie Albies lead the way, with lack of production at shortstop and left field playing a big role as well. Closer Raisel Iglesias has struggled, and the team is 11-22 in one-run games. Spencer Strider hasn’t yet reached his pre-injury level and Reynaldo Lopez made just one start before going down.

The Braves haven’t missed the playoffs since 2017, but that run is clearly in jeopardy.


The Orioles have a similar record to the Braves but have played much worse, including losses of 24-2, 19-5, 15-3 and two separate 9-0 shutouts.

They will spend the trade deadline dealing away as many of their impending free agents as possible, and then do a lot of soul-searching heading into the offseason. After making the playoffs in 2023 and 2024, will this season just be a blip? While the pitching struggles aren’t necessarily a big surprise, what has happened to the offense? Are some of their young players prospects or suspects?


After two months of Cleveland Spiders-level baseball, it would be easy to make fun of the Rockies. Especially since they recently announced Walker Monfort — son of the owner — was promoted to executive VP and will replace outgoing president and COO Greg Feasel.

On the other hand, the Rockies are doing something right: They just drew 121,000 for a three-game series against the White Sox.

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How Ichiro’s HOF induction helps tell the story of Japanese baseball

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How Ichiro's HOF induction helps tell the story of Japanese baseball

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — Hall of Famers coming to Cooperstown — the newbies and the veterans alike — are typically subject to a fairly regimented schedule. They have a garden party. Ozzie Smith holds an annual charity event. There’s a golf tournament on Saturday morning. They roll down Main Street on Saturday night during the Parade of Legends. Finally, there is the induction itself.

Ichiro Suzuki, a 2025 inductee, took part in much of this, but even though he is an avid golfer, he did not play in the golf tournament. It turns out that doing so would’ve meant that he wouldn’t be able to maintain his usual workout routine. So he headed out to one of the numerous Little League fields a few miles outside of Cooperstown and got in his work.

At 51 years old, he follows the same routine he always has. He played long toss, did his stretching and running, played catch with Billy Wagner’s son — an aspiring ballplayer himself — and took batting practice against Wagner.

When asked why, Ichiro kept it simple.

“Because I love it,” he said.

That much has been clear, not only through his 19-year MLB career but well before it and since. His induction weekend was not the first time Ichiro made the pilgrimage to Cooperstown — he has been here many times. Each trek he made as a player was to view and study different relics that held special meaning to him.

“You just don’t see players come to the Hall of Fame, while they’re actively playing in the winter time — seven, eight times, because they just want to touch the bat of the guy whose record they broke,” Hall of Fame president Josh Rawitch said, “or be here in the freezing cold and snow to see this place.”

Ichiro didn’t limit those travels to the stops in Cooperstown — he famously visited the gravesite of Hall of Famer George Sisler after he broke Sisler’s single-season hit record in 2004 — but the beauty of the Hall of Fame is that it ties all of these interlocking stories together, linking the stars of the past with the stars of the present with the stars of the even more distant past, and in some cases, the stars of the future.

For a person like Ichiro, who is deeply interested in historical artifacts and the stories they represent, there is no better place than Cooperstown, and there is no better ambassador for Cooperstown than Ichiro.

“The history of baseball is very important,” Ichiro said. “We’re able to play the game today because of players of the past. I really want to understand them and know more about them. I think we all need to know the game of the past, things of the past, so we can keep moving it forward.”

Ichiro’s plaque there suggests the closing of a historical, cultural and symbolic loop that brings together two great baseball cultures.

It was the converging of paths, joining the practice of yakyu, the game Ichiro began playing at age 3, and the pastime of baseball, the game he still plays — with ritualistic abandon — at 51.

For all of the cultural significance and the historic nature of Ichiro’s induction, it’s this work ethic and his meticulous nature that is almost certainly going to be his greatest legacy. And it’s one that spins into the future, as he blazes a path to serve as a guide for the Japanese and American stars of the future — and present — to follow.

Before Shohei Ohtani, there was Ichiro. Before Ichiro, there were many, but none who followed the path that perhaps only he could see.


EVEN BEFORE SUNDAY, Ichiro Suzuki had a Hall of Fame plaque on a wall. That one was hung in January at the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame Museum, located within the Tokyo Dome.

The contrast between Cooperstown, a tiny rustic village in upstate New York, and Tokyo, one of the world’s largest and most dense cities, couldn’t be more stark. But the baseball galleries within them look very similar, right up to the shape and size of the plaques themselves.

This is no coincidence. The American version came first; the very concept of a Hall of Fame is a purely American convention. So when one was built in Japan, back in the late 1950s, it was an early sign of the dissolution of differences between the two leading baseball cultures.

The differences, convergences and exchanges between the two is the story told in the Hall of Fame’s stunning new exhibit “Yakyu | Baseball: The Transpacific Exchange of the Game.”

“This isn’t just an exhibition about baseball in Japan,” said RJ Lara, the curator of the exhibit. “This isn’t just an exhibition about baseball in the United States. It’s about how the two countries and how baseball in two countries has come together and exchanged equipment, ideas, concepts, players, teams.”

Baseball’s roots in Japan trace to the 1850s, the game exported there by visiting Americans and seafarers. For decades, even as the popularity of baseball spread, it remained a strictly amateur practice, with the college level seen as the pinnacle of the sport into the middle of the 20th century.

While baseball grew into America’s pastime as a source of joy and play for anyone who could toss a ball or swing a bat, in Japan, at least in the early years, yakyu was viewed as a martial art. In fact, the first thing you see when you walk into the exhibit is a suit of traditional Samurai armor, full of red and gold — a gift from the Yomiuri Giants to Los Angeles Dodgers president Peter O’Malley in 1988.

Yakyu, one of the Japanese words for baseball, describes a game that evolved from the American version and still differs in mainly intangible ways and strategic preferences. The gap between the two has narrowed, as the success of Ichiro, Ohtani and others strongly suggests. But it might never completely disappear.

The “Samurai Way of Baseball” — as author Robert Whiting described it — meant a painstaking focus on practice and repetition, a heavy emphasis on fundamentals and a standardized version of the game in which every discrete act had a precise method behind it, and everything was about the team: the “wa,” as outlined by Whiting in the seminal “You Gotta Have Wa.”

Starting around 1905, teams on both sides of the Pacific began making the voyage to compete against one another. But the biggest influence on the professionalization of baseball in Japan came in 1934, when a team of American barnstormers stuffed with future Hall of Famers — including Babe Ruth — toured the country, drawing huge crowds nearly everywhere they went.

Plans for a professional league were already being hatched, and the success of the 1934 tour helped to cement them. The Yomiuri Giants were founded in 1935, and, as longtime Tokyo resident Whiting put it, grew into a behemoth that became as popular as the Dodgers, New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox combined. It set the stage for Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima and the legends who laid the foundation of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) — and the collision of Japanese and American baseball that the exhibit celebrates.


THE YAKYU EXHIBIT has three centerpieces, and appropriately the first one you encounter focuses on Hideo Nomo. (Ichiro is the second and, though you can probably guess who is the third, we will come to that a bit later.)

Nomo was not the first Japanese-born player to make the transition to the major leagues: The seal was broken in the mid-1960s, when Masanori Murakami pitched two seasons for the San Francisco Giants. There was a lot of rancor in Japan over the move, and after two seasons, Murakami went back to Japan. Meanwhile, greats such as Oh and Nagashima stayed put, both spending their careers with Yomiuri, thanks to the reserve clause in place in Japan, as well as a societal pressure to remain true to Japanese baseball.

Oh talked in later years about how he would’ve liked to have played in the majors, but he just couldn’t do it. The taboo against jumping the pond remained in place until the mid-1990s. This was when Nomo “retired” from his team in Japan, a ploy cooked up by agent Don Nomura to exploit a loophole. Nomo ended up with the Dodgers, and Nomo-mania was born.

Nomo was heavily criticized at the time in Japan, and doubt existed in America about whether a Japanese player could truly make the leap. Nomo more than proved his ability to make the transition, and did so with such verve that it swept through Southern California and beyond, and also captivated audiences in Japan. The practice of baseball fans on the other side of the Pacific rising in the early morning to watch MLB began at that time.

The exhibit features some of Nomo’s equipment, as well as videos of hitters flailing at his nasty splitter. There are also some model baseballs with which you can try to simulate the grips Nomo used on his various pitches, including that splitter.

Jack Morris was in the midst of praising the nastiness of Nomo’s splitter when fellow Hall of Famer Ozzie Smith interjected, “You should try to hit it!”


NOMO’S DEBUT SEASON in 1995 preceded the now-celebrated 1996 Japan tour, which saw an MLB all-star team that included Cal Ripken Jr. play an eight-game series against players from the NPB, then called All-Japan. Ripken had gone on a similar tour in 1986, along with Morris and Smith, and a decade later he already noticed a marked difference in the caliber of play from his Japanese opponents.

“Going over there, you kind of look and shake your head and go, ‘These people are crazy about baseball,'” Ripken said. “They were talking about drawing 60,000 fans for a high school championship game.

“I thought the Japanese were always really competitive and very serious. They wanted to do really well. They wanted to beat us.”

One of the opponents of the all-star group in 1996 was Ichiro, and that experience for the Japanese star, in combination with the phenomenon that Nomo created, began to turn his head toward the other side of the Pacific. He wanted to test himself.

“The excitement I felt in that series was definitely a turning point,” Ichiro told author Narumi Komatsu in “Ichiro on Ichiro.” “Instead of something I just admired from afar, the majors became a set goal of mine.”

Ichiro had become a phenomenon in his home country, his face splattered on billboards all over Tokyo and beyond, as he exploded on the scene by becoming the first player in Japanese professional history to record 200 hits in a season, setting the since-broken record of 210 at age 20. He hit .353 during his nine years for Orix, which would far away be the all-time highest average in Japanese history if he qualified for the career leaderboard.

He did it in his own way, forging a path unlike any players before him. He famously refused to change the batting stance he’d used since high school — much to the chagrin of his first manager with Orix.

Ichiro also donned the name “Ichiro” on his jersey, departing from Japanese tradition. Suzuki is a common name in Japan and his club felt that would make him all the more marketable, which it did. To this day, in baseball everywhere, when you hear the name “Ichiro”, you know exactly who’s being referenced.

Bobby Valentine, who initially bucked against tradition when he went to manage in Japan, eschewing conventions such as marathon practice sessions and incessant meetings, saw things evolving, especially when he prepared for his first stint with the Chiba Lotte Marines in 1995, the year Nomo debuted with the Dodgers.

“That was the year after Ichiro was Rookie of the Year for Orix in 1994,” Valentine said. “Every night, all the coaches got together and looked at video and looked at charts, trying to figure out one guy, Ichiro.

“He showed me what he could do. I asked him for an autographed bat and told him that he was one of the best players I ever saw.”

Later, when Valentine was managing the New York Mets, he unsuccessfully lobbied his front office to pursue Ichiro.

“I was told at the end of the day, that they didn’t want a singles hitter in the outfield,” Valentine said mournfully. “And I said, ‘What if you get 200 of them?’ I swear. And he got like 240 of them.”


AT TIMES, IT has been far from certain that the paths that came together through Ichiro on Sunday would indeed merge. That part of the story isn’t overlooked in the yakyu exhibit.

It’s depicted in a couple of very different ways that relate the baseball sliver of the story of the years during and after World War II, including the post-war period when the United States occupied Japan under the supervision of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

One object from the war years is the most melancholy relic in the exhibition, and indeed perhaps in the entire Hall of Fame.

It is a handmade, wooden home plate that once was part of Zenimura Field at the Gila River in Arizona internment camp during the war. The field was built by Kenichi Zenimura, a baseball advocate born in Hiroshima who spent most of his childhood in Hawaii.

The home plate is a a solemn reminder of how the forces that too often keep nations apart can’t be overcome by baseball alone. But if baseball can’t keep nations from conflict, conflict can’t keep people from baseball.

“It was the anchor of the Gila River community, and that’s how we like to describe it,” Lara said. “During these tragic, incredibly hard times at this camp in Arizona, it was the anchor that brought the community together, around a single baseball diamond that they built with their hands.”

After the war, when the occupation of Japan began, much of the country, and especially Tokyo, was in ruin. The battle for the ideological soul of the country was well underway in those early years of the Cold War, and the influence of communist Russia was of chief concern for the Americans.

MacArthur thought that reigniting the dormant cultural elements of Japanese society might help to calm things down and help make some headway in turning heads from the encroaching communist influence. With many of the country’s cultural institutions in rubble or ashes, sports, especially baseball — which can be played outside and a sport the Japanese already loved — was the answer.

Author Robert K. Fitts describes the sequence in “Banzai Babe Ruth.” League play resumed in 1946. Things improved enough that in 1947, Japan celebrated Babe Ruth Day at the same time that the major leagues were honoring the dying slugger. Quality of play began to recover but the overall fervor around yakyu still fell short of the pre-war years.

In 1949, on a suggestion from MacArthur staffer Cappy Harada, the project was turned over to Lefty O’Doul, who had fallen in love with Japan on a 1931 tour with other major leaguers and played a key role in helping convince Ruth to join the 1934 tour.

O’Doul, manager of the San Francisco Seals, brought his Pacific Coast League squad to Japan after the 1949 season to tour the country. The Seals were welcomed with a parade and, over the course of four weeks, helped boost the morale of a struggling nation. One evening before a game, for the first time, the flags of the United States and Japan were raised together, bringing many fans to tears.

Japanese journalist and historian Tadao Kunishi sees the O’Doul tour as one of the turning points in the evolution of Japanese baseball, especially in its gradual move toward becoming more like the American game.

“During that time, Japan was still doing the rebuilding,” Kunishi said. “We did not have much entertainment, and baseball is outside. So many movie theaters were burned down, so they cannot play, but baseball is outside, and anybody can go there. And really [Lefty] O’Doul brought the joy of watching baseball.”

A veritable baseball Forrest Gump, O’Doul always seemed to be in the middle of baseball history. He pitched for John McGraw. He converted to hitting and one year batted .398 in the National League. He managed and mentored life-long friend Joe DiMaggio, whom he brought along on a later, much-celebrated tour of Japan. He saw the potential of Japan as a baseball nation from the start.

“He said it was just a matter of time that Japanese ballplayers are going to be playing in America,” said Tom O’Doul, Lefty’s cousin. “And they’re going to be playing American baseball because they’re good and they respect the game. And that’s what happened.”

Though you don’t need to attribute the eventual boom in Japan — baseball and beyond — entirely to Lefty O’Doul and baseball, those tours proved to be a turning point in the ongoing exchange in the sport between Japan and America, which had seemed hopelessly severed.


THE THIRD CENTERPIECE of the yakyu exhibit, along with Nomo and Ichiro, as you probably have guessed, is the display for Shohei Ohtani, who is in the midst of a Hall of Fame career, and thus years away from joining Ichiro in the Japanese and the American plaque rooms. But he will get there.

Ohtani’s display looms in the back of the room behind Ichiro and indeed, from a certain angle as you stand there and look upon Ichiro’s uniform and bat and shoes and batting glove, a little lower to the left and against the wall behind him, you see an image of Decoy, the most famous dog — and literary muse — in all of baseball.

As for the player himself, Ohtani’s display is a stunning piece of museum technology. Depending on which angle you take to look at his image, you might see him pitching or hitting for the Los Angeles Angels, doing the same for the Dodgers, or celebrating the end of Japan’s victory in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, which he clinched by fanning Mike Trout for the last out.

The rise of Ohtani is also a chief part of the legacies of Oh and Nagashima and Nomo and Ichiro. By now, 74 players have made the transition to the major leagues — not all with resounding success, but many have reached All-Star status. All you have to do is look in the financial ledgers and the contracts that have been dolled out to the likes of Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki to know how Japanese stars are valued today.

For his part, Ichiro does think that the differences between yakyu and MLB have softened, but they still exist — and they should.

“It usually takes a few years for Japanese baseball to pick up the things that happen in major leagues,” Suzuki said. “It’s definitely getting closer.

“I don’t think that Japan should copy what the MLB does. I think Japanese baseball should be Japanese baseball in the way they do things, and MLB should be the way they are. I think they should be different.”

And yet in so many ways, Ichiro himself was the bridge. He was yakyu and he was baseball.

Ichiro, who will generally give frank answers about himself and his thoughts about baseball, almost always deflects when asked about the thoughts or impressions of others. He still does it.

When asked about his role or his sense of how Japanese fans are reacting to his induction to Cooperstown, he says he doesn’t know. When asked about his relationship to the current Japanese stars in the major leagues, he says that he sees them at the ballpark when they come through Seattle.

He doesn’t get any more detailed when asked about the path that he has opened up for other Japanese stars, but he does open up a little when discussing his role in spreading knowledge to the next generation of players on both sides of the Pacific.

“The players need to tell the younger players about the game,” Ichiro said. “That’s a responsibility that those who have played this game have. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to help in that aspect, but it’s something I’d really like to do.”

As much as anything, Ichiro’s legacy is helping to bring the paths of two different baseball cultures together.

“We used to say that yakyu and baseball are different games with the same rules,” Kunishi said. “Now yakyu and baseball is the same game and the same rules.”

As far as legacies go, that’s not bad, even if the process remains ongoing. In the meantime, Ichiro will be there, connected with Cooperstown and Japan alike, making sure that no aspects of all the history he has been a part of will be lost.

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Alcantara: Uncertainty at trade deadline ‘hard’

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Alcantara: Uncertainty at trade deadline 'hard'

MIAMI — Sandy Alcantara admitted that Thursday was one of the hardest days of his career.

It has been thought all season that the Miami Marlins could move on from Alcantara amid their rebuilding project, which has included shipping out established players for prospects.

And as Thursday’s 6 p.m. ET trade deadline approached, the Marlins’ ace could not hide his nerves.

He sat in front of his television watching baseball programming with his family for most of the day, repeatedly checking his phone to see if he had been traded.

“It was hard, man,” Alcantara said Friday. “Every time I get on my phone, I see my name. I thought that I was leaving.”

Miami opted not to trade its 2022 NL Cy Young Award winner. In their only trade Thursday, the Marlins sent their longest-tenured position player, outfielder Jesús Sánchez, to the Houston Astros for right-hander Ryan Gusto and two prospects, infielder Chase Jaworsky and outfielder Esmil Valencia.

The rest of the team, which has won five straight series and went 15-10 in July, remains intact. Marlins president of baseball operations Peter Bendix said Friday that the club’s recent success, in part, factored into its approach at the deadline.

And manager Clayton McCullough said if there weren’t trade scenarios that “moved the needle for us in the near and the long term,” the Marlins were happy to continue competing with the group they have.

Amid what was expected to be a season of finding out which of its relatively inexperienced pieces Miami could build around in the future, the Marlins are third in the National League East at 52-55 and entered Friday seven games behind San Diego for the National League’s third wild-card spot.

Bendix declined to say how close Miami was to finalizing a trade for Alcantara but noted that the team “felt really comfortable” with its ultimate decision.

“All of the things that go into building a sustainably successful team were taken into consideration,” he said, “at a deadline where you have all of these decisions in front of you. It’s our job to be disciplined. Disciplined means listening, means having conversations, and then means trying to figure out the best decision to make for every decision point that we have.”

Alcantara has played most of his eight-year career in Miami, going 47-64 with a 3.64 ERA in 159 starts while becoming the first Miami player to win the Cy Young Award after a 2022 season in which he pitched a league-high 228 innings and six complete games.

Alcantara, 29, missed the 2024 season recovering from Tommy John surgery and hasn’t yet returned to form in 2025. He is 6-9 with a 6.36 ERA, and despite being known as one of MLB’s most durable starters, has pitched only seven innings once.

He said it has taken a new level of mental toughness to play through a season not knowing if he would finish the year with the Marlins.

“It was a little hard because everywhere you go, every time you grab your phone, you see your name on the media,” Alcantara said. “But you [can’t] think too much about it. Just stay focused on everything you can do. I just came here, and if something happened, it just happened.”

Alcantara’s most recent two starts have been his best, an indicator to both the player and the Marlins that he might be close to returning to his All-Star caliber play.

He allowed one run and four hits in a season-high seven innings against the San Diego Padres on July 23, then pitched five shutout innings in a win at St. Louis on Tuesday.

“Sandy is continuing to trend,” McCullough said. “And we’re going to continue to be the beneficiaries of having Sandy for the rest of the season, continuing to get back to the pitcher that we all know Sandy is.”

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Rays place 1B Aranda on IL with fractured wrist

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Rays place 1B Aranda on IL with fractured wrist

TAMPA, Fla. — The Tampa Bay Rays placed All-Star first baseman Jonathan Aranda on the 10-day injured list Friday with a fractured left wrist.

Aranda was injured Thursday in a collision with New York Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton.

Aranda said the injury did not feel “catastrophic” and he’s hopeful he’ll return this season, although the Rays cautioned he won’t be able to use the wrist for approximately three weeks.

Aranda’s wrist has been immobilized in an air cast and he’s scheduled to undergo more imaging at the three-week mark. At that point, the Rays will reassess his return timetable.

“Let’s see how the bone heals,” manager Kevin Cash said before Friday night’s series opener against the Los Angeles Dodgers. “I think he has re-imaging in about three weeks, but we will continue to remain optimistic.”

Stanton hit a soft grounder in the fifth inning to third baseman Junior Caminero, who charged in on wet grass to field the ball. Aranda reached for Caminero’s wide toss that sailed into the runner, and his left wrist appeared to hit Stanton’s left shoulder.

Aranda, a first-time All-Star, is batting .316 with 12 home runs, 54 RBI in 103 games this season. He has a .394 on-base percentage, and an .872 OPS, making him one of the majors’ most dangerous hitters.

Cash shifted Yandy Díaz to first base in Aranda’s absence.

The Rays reinstated Ha-Seong Kim from the IL and recalled Tristan Gray from Triple-A Durham.

Trade deadline acquisitions Griffin Jax and Hunter Feduccia were active for Friday night’s game.

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