Chicago Cubs News: Dodgers to start Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Roki Sasaki in Tokyo series

With just over a month until the Chicago Cubs and Los Angeles Dodgers open the 2025 MLB season in Tokyo, the Dodgers have announced their starters for the two games.

It is no surprise that the two former Japanese superstars will get the pitching assignments in the Tokyo games. Yamamoto made his MLB debut last season in the Seoul Series against the Padres and it was an unpleasant welcome to the major leagues.

Yamamoto allowed five runs on four hits in the first inning of his MLB career, and he would leave the game after the first inning.

Yamamoto did however get his first career win against the Cubs. He went five shutout innings, walking two and striking out eight in his first appearance at Wrigley Field.

For Sasaki, he will be making his MLB debut if he is indeed the Game 2 starter for the Dodgers. We are all familiar with the long offseason of waiting to see where Sasaki would land, even though we all truly knew deep down that he would end up in Los Angeles.

Sasaki will look to avoid suffering the same fate as his teammate, who struggled in his first career start last season. If the Dodgers decide to wait on Sasaki's debut, other potential starters would be Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow, Dustin May, Emmett Sheehan, or Clayton Kershaw.

The Cubs have not announced starters for both games, but manager Craig Counsell did announce that Shota Imanaga would start one of the two games. That was much expected, as Imanaga was Chicago's best pitcher and would have started one of the Cubs' first two games regardless of their location.

It would be expected that Justin Steele will start whichever game Imanaga does not, but the Cubs do have a lot of depth and a lot of options if they wanted to stay away from left-handed starters in back-to-back games.