TOKYO – Fans were winding down the stairs and around a bend, waiting to enter the Tokyo Dome. No games were being played. Merely a workout that was still an hour away.
The main attraction, Los Angeles Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, wouldn’t come out onto the field for several hours.
Still, fans packed the lower bowl of the Tokyo Dome on Friday afternoon. Some estimated that there were upwards of 10,000, many of them in Dodgers blue with hundreds donning Ohtani jerseys. It’s clear that while their home is thousands of miles away, the Dodgers will have the advantage over the Chicago Cubs when it comes to fans in the seats. That’s to be expected, as the team boasts three of the biggest Japanese stars to come stateside in Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.
“(I’ve) definitely never seen that,” Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong said of the crowd for the workouts. “Gives you a little insight (into) how much love they have for baseball here combined with the five Japanese guys that are representing our clubs, themselves and their country as well. I think that’s pretty one-of-a-kind having this many people watching us take BP and watching me catch balls behind my back and mess around a little bit. That’s definitely been the coolest part of today, the atmosphere of this practice.”
Though outnumbered, there were Cubs hats speckled across the crowd. After meeting the media in the Tokyo Dome Hotel outside of the stadium, the Cubs’ Japanese stars, Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki, joined the teammates a little late as they took a team photo in center field.
“These are two of our most important players,” manager Craig Counsell said. “The Chicago Cubs need Shota and Seiya to be great players to accomplish what we want to accomplish.”
Imanaga had a great debut season in 2024, boasting the fifth-lowest ERA (2.91) among eligible starters while leading a strong Cubs rotation. In his third year with the team, Suzuki continued to improve, putting up a career-best 138 wRC+ and showing he is one of the more impactful bats in the game.
Counsell believes there’s even more to what Suzuki, who played in 132 games last season, can bring.
“I think he continues to grow as an offensive player,” Counsell said. “We really believe there’s another season in there that shows him as one of the elite hitters in Major League Baseball.”
For a team that seemed to disappoint offensively for most of the year, the Cubs actually ended the season 12th in runs scored. That happened despite Wrigley Field playing like a pitcher’s paradise, where offenses had the second-worst OPS in all of baseball. With the addition of Kyle Tucker and the expectation that offense will normalize in Chicago, if Suzuki can take another step forward, there’s a chance the bats on the North Side of Chicago could be some of the most potent in the league.
Cubs monitoring, not in rush to add pitcher
The Cubs continue to keep tabs on free-agent pitchers, checking in on Lance Lynn and others, but they’re happy with their depth and don’t appear to be on the verge of adding anyone to a major-league deal just yet.
“I think we’re in a good place,” Counsell said of his pitching staff. “Essentially because we’re healthy. But we have nine games until (domestic) Opening Day. A lot can change between now and then. Something will happen, I’m sure.”
Pitcher Colin Rea didn’t travel with the team, staying back in Arizona to throw in a minor-league game as he preferred to get a full game’s workload in to try and continue to get stretched out. He’ll be available and part of the 26-man roster that opens the season Tuesday in Tokyo.
The Cubs return to Arizona on Thursday and start a stretch of five straight exhibition games on March 22 before resuming the regular season March 28 against the Arizona Diamondbacks. Counsell and his staff are keeping an eye on the effects of the ramp-up to Tokyo, followed by the ramp back down the following week.
“There’s no question that right now is something that’s (possibly) bothers a couple of guys,” Counsell said. “Right now, there’s also nothing we can do about it. For those guys, we’ve got five games on the back end. Let’s see what the schedule lets us do with that to try to get them back going again. If we pitch really well, there’s going to be somebody that doesn’t pitch. That’s what you want, to pitch really well.”
A younger Counsell makes headlines
Cubs manager Craig Counsell attends a training session in Tokyo on Friday. (Photo: Yuichi Yamazaki / AFP via Getty Images)
Counsell’s son Brady, an outfielder at the University of Kansas, was part of a viral moment on Wednesday when he was third in a string of five consecutive home runs slugged by Jayhawks hitters.
Counsell said his phone was buzzing with messages at 4 a.m. in Japan on Thursday with the news.
“I got woken up to that,” a proud Counsell said of the messages. “MLB reposted it, ‘SportsCenter’ had it on, the ‘NBC Nighly News’ — someone sent it to me. Lester Holt was talking about it. I mean, if Lester Holt’s talking about it, it’s a big deal!”
It was just the fourth time it had happened in college baseball. The MLB record remains four straight.
Entering play on Friday, Brady Counsell, a senior, had four home runs in 17 games and a slash line of .345/.481/.569. Counsell’s younger son, Jack, a sophomore, is in his first season as an infielder at Northwestern.
(Top photo: Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
