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Fans who want to watch Shohei Ohtani's debut with the Los Angeles Dodgers will have to wait until 3 a.m. PT for the team's opener against the San Diego Padres in South Korea on March 20.
They can at least feel confident he'll actually be playing that game.
Appearing at DodgerFest on Saturday, Ohtani told reporters through an interpreter he feels "very confident" he will be ready for Opening Day after undergoing surgery for a torn UCL at the end of last season. He went into further detail while speaking with SportsNet LA:
"As far as the hitting goes, I'm already swinging close to 100% so I feel like as long as everything goes as planned — and right now, it has been going — I should be ready for Korea, the Opening Day. And as far as the pitching side, we still haven't really started anything.
"The plan is to start rehab in spring in Arizona and kinda take it slower from there. Compared to my first surgery rehab, I feel like this time around is a lot quicker and everything is just a lot smoother."
Ohtani is not expected to pitch at all in 2024. While his agent denied he underwent a second Tommy John surgery, it's clear Ohtani did have a ligament repaired that can be very tricky to recover from a second time, so the Dodgers are obviously not going to take any risks with their $700 million man.
The Dodgers apparently already have Ohtani's spot in the lineup figured out. Manager Dave Roberts told fans that Ohtani will bat third, with Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman occupying the 1-2 spots they did last year.
It's not exactly a surprise the Dodgers are batting their three elite hitters in the top three spots in the lineup, though it's worth pointing out going Betts-Freeman-Ohtani will mean batting their two top left-handed batters back-to-back, potentially giving opposing managers an easy choice on how to navigate platoons in the late innings.
Then again, Freeman hit .335/.399/.609 in 218 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers last season and Ohtani was still respectable at .245/.365/.532 in 170 PAs, so southpaws will have to be wary.
During his time with the Los Angeles Angels, Ohtani hit third in 247 out of 701 games, including 59 out of 135 games last season.
Daniel Weinman was crowned winner of the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event on Monday, taking home a record breaking $12.1 million in winnings. Weinman had to outlast the other 10,043 entrants to take home the prize and get his hands on his share of live poker’s largest ever prize pool – a staggering $93,399,900. As well as taking home the prize money, 35-year-old Weinman also got his hands on the WSOP Main Event bracelet. The huge bracelet contains 500 grams of 10-karat yellow gold, as well as 2,352 various precious gemstones.
Daniel Weinman won the World Series of Poker's main event world championship on Monday in Las Vegas, earning $12.1 million along the way. Playing in the tournament for a 16th year, Weinman was tops in a deep pool of 10,043 players vying for $93.39 million. His victory came after just 164 hands at the final table. "I was honestly on the fence about even coming back and playing this tournament," the 35-year-old Atlanta native told reporters afterward. Weinman's final table featured Jan-Peter Jachtmann, who landed in fourth place and took home $3 million, as well as Toby Lewis, who finished seventh and secured $1.42 million. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the main event's entry pool far outpaced the previous record of 8,773 set in 2006. "I've always kind of felt that poker was kind of going in a dying direction, but to see the numbers at the World Series this year has been incredible," Weinman said. "And to win this main event, it doesn't feel real. I mean, [there's] so much luck in a poker tournament. I thought I played very well." Steven Jones finished second, securing $6.5 million. And Adam Walton settled for third and a $4 million prize.
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