Hockey betting: First-period wagering, early trends and other tips
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Tim Keown
TOKYO — The expectations for Shohei Ohtani‘s first trip to Japan as a major-league player were massive and unyielding. He is a near-mythic figure in his home country, and his presence here this week felt as much like a royal visit as it did a guy coming into town to play some baseball.
The sellout crowds at the Tokyo Dome — some of whom paid well into the thousands of dollars for tickets on the secondary markets — found even more reason to appreciate baseball’s version of a motion-sensor light: always ready to perform on demand.
Ohtani’s fifth-inning home run, a towering shot that seemed to disappear into the dome’s dirty-gray roof, managed the delight the crowd twice, once when it barely cleared the wall in right-center, and again minutes later when an umpires’ review confirmed its status as Ohtani’s first homer of 2025.
In the Dodgers‘ two-game sweep of the Cubs in the Tokyo Series, capped by Wednesday night’s 6-3 win, Ohtani reached base five times, scored three runs and dominated conversation on and off the field. Eventually, baseball will turn its attention to the potential for a record-breaking Dodgers season — 162-0 is still in play — but for at least one more night, it was all Ohtani.
“It’s almost become the expectation that whenever he comes up in a big situation, he’s going to come through,” said Dodgers second baseman Tommy Edman, who hit the first homer of the 2025 season in the third inning. “We’re all out there grinding, trying to win a game, and he’s playing a different game altogether.”
The expectations were more muted for Dodgers rookie starter Roki Sasaki, who was faced with a heavy task: make his regular-season debut in Tokyo, at 23 years old and just months removed from playing Nippon Professional Baseball, in front of a hyped-up crowd that seemed to live and breathe through every pitch.
Before the game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts downplayed both the importance and the expectation for Sasaki’s first start. His first four warmup pitches were uncatchable, with two going to the backstop. He looked visibly nervous on the mound, and he appeared ready to pitch at any moment, which caused him to be warned to wait for eye contact from the batter’s box on two of the first five hitters.
Sasaki’s talent is mesmerizing. His first four pitches hit 100 mph, and he topped out at 101. Regardless of the question, he has one answer: throw harder. He has a mind-of-its-own split that moves of its own free will, and it’s already being described as one of the best pitches in baseball.
Nobody can hit him, but as his first outing showed, maybe they don’t need to.
He allowed just one hit in his three innings, a weak infield single to Jon Berti, but walked five and threw more balls than strikes. He allowed two easy stolen bases when he He walked in a run in the third, one of a stretch of three in a row, but then came back to strike out Michael Busch and Matt Shaw to finish his three-inning stint with just one run allowed.
“I think there were nerves, and understandably so,” Roberts said. “The velocity was good, but I thought the emotions, the adrenaline, was hard to rein in. … The highs are going to be high, and when he’s not commanding it, it gets a little bit tricky. I do want to say he wanted to stay in the game. That’s a decision I made in the best interest of him, but he wanted to keep going.”
Sasaki’s motion looks like an elaborate stretching routine. His leg kick, like his split, goes everywhere at once: out first, then up, then back, with his left heel kicking his hamstring before his whip-like body fires toward the plate.
The Tokyo crowd, filled with velocity aficionados, oohed and aahed every time Sasaki topped 98. After he walked in the run in the third, they began to clap as one, quickly and plaintively, rising to Sasaki’s defense that sounded like nervousness masquerading as hope.
Ohtani — always Ohtani — had two more at bats after his home run. In the seventh, Cubs manager Craig Counsell caused the second-biggest crowd reaction of the night when he unsurprisingly walked Ohtani intentionally with Andy Pages on second and two outs in the seventh. It was easy to lose perspective amid the Ohtani fervor this week in Tokyo, and none of the 42,365 in the park seemed all that interested in experiencing Counsell strategizing to try to win a game.
SURPRISE, Ariz. — The Texas Rangers signed free agent left-hander Patrick Corbin to a one-year contract Tuesday, plugging a durable veteran into their injury-addled starting rotation.
Corbin, who’ll enter his 13th major league season, struggled through most of his six-year, $140 million contract with the Washington Nationals, but he’s a two-time All-Star who is the only pitcher in baseball who made 31 or more starts in every full season since 2017.
The Rangers placed right-hander Jon Gray on the 60-day injured list to make room on the 40-man roster for Corbin. Gray broke his right wrist when he was hit by a line drive in a spring training game on Friday. Left-hander Cody Bradford, who was shut down from throwing last week when he developed soreness in his elbow, will start the season on the injured list.
Injuries were an issue for the rotation last year, but the re-signing of Nathan Eovaldi and the return of Jacob deGrom and Tyler Mahle after recoveries from elbow surgeries delayed their 2024 debuts had the 2023 World Series champion Rangers appearing to be in good shape entering spring training.
Corbin, who has logged the third-most innings in Major League Baseball since he broke in with the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2012, was a stabilizer.
“A competitor, by all accounts, just a winning personality, somebody who’s going to fit in our clubhouse well and gives us added protection,” president of baseball operations Chris Young told reporters. “We also believe that there’s some things we saw in the second half of last year with his performance that indicate he can continue that and be a very serviceable major league starting pitcher, which we need right now.”
Corbin had a solid debut season with the Nationals in 2019, when he matched his career high of 14 wins, posted a 3.25 ERA in 33 starts and was the winning pitcher in Game 7 of the World Series. But he went 33-70 with a 5.62 ERA over the next five years after the pandemic shortened the 2020 season.
The 35-year-old allowed the most hits (208) and earned runs (109) in the major leagues in 2024, but he was second on the 91-loss Nationals with 174⅔ innings. In 342 career appearances, including 324 starts, Corbin is 103-131 with a 4.51 ERA and 1,729 strikeouts in 1,892⅓ innings.
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