To start the 2025 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers begin their defense of their World Series title with the Tokyo Series, a two-game set against the Cubs in Tokyo, Japan on March 18 and 19. While not ideal (from a travel perspective) right in the middle of spring training, these tentpole events over in Japan have become a key part of MLB’s attempts to expand their global reach, with the Dodgers being an obvious team to feature prominently.
While these game are a lot of fun and a bit of a novelty, they also do count, and getting the season off to a strong start has a lot of value. It doesn’t hurt that the Japanese crowd is likely to be heavily pro-LA, with the presence of stars like Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Roki Sasaki. Being as close to full strength as possible would be ideal.
Unfortunately, that is not going to be the case for this pair of opening games, as it was revealed that Dodgers star Mookie Betts will miss the Tokyo Series, as he is currently dealing with a stomach virus.
Mookie Betts will miss both of the Dodgers’ season-opening games at the Tokyo Domeas he continues to recover from a stomach virus that has kept him out of action since last weekend.@ByJackHarris on what this means to the team. pic.twitter.com/4i1gDVJf9i
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) March 17, 2025
Dodgers’ Mookie Betts is officially out for the Tokyo Series (illness)
Unfortunately, this development with Betts isn’t entirely unexpected. Betts missed LA’s spring training games over the weekend dealing with the same issue, and was considered questionable for the Tokyo Series before he was officially ruled out.
The good news here is that Betts’ illness is expected to be a short-term problem. He is not injured beyond feeling crummy, and should be ready to go once the Dodgers break camp at the end of the month. Having a player the caliber of Betts miss any games that count is not ideal, but this does appear to be a short absence that shouldn’t mess the team up too much.
Oddly enough, this isn’t the first time that stomach issues have caused Betts problems during the spring. Back in 2020, Betts had another battle with a stomach bug that threatened his Opening Day availability as well. Betts would go on to finish second in the NL MVP race that season, and one hopes that the outcome will be as good this time as it was back then.
