Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Player’s Association recently released the full roster of current MLB ballplayers who will be traveling to Japan this November to play against some of the very best talent in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB).
The roster will include three Dodgers this year, being Chris Taylor, Kiké Hernandez, and Kenta Maeda. All three players were featured on the Dodgers’ World Series roster, meaning their turn-around from the Fall Classic to the Japanese All-Star Series will be a quick one.
Maeda, native of Japan, is a former member of the NPB, playing for the Hiroshima Toyo Carp in his time there. Maeda will join a team of pitchers including familiar division rivals such as Kirby Yates of the Padres and Matt Andriese of the Diamondbacks.
Taylor is listed officially as an infielder for the MLB’s roster, while Hernandez is listed as an outfielder on the roster. Both players will presumably be interchangeable for both the infield and the outfield, but in that way is how Major League Baseball lists the two position players representative of the Dodgers this year.
The team will be managed by former Dodgers manager, Don Mattingly. Now manager of the Marlins, Mattingly was in as manager for the Dodgers from 2011 until 2015. In that time, Mattingly managed the Dodgers to three playoff appearances.
Arrick Joel has covered the Dodgers since 2017, and for Dodgers-LowDown since 2018. Follow @ArrickJoel and @DodgersLowDown on Twitter for more.