Every four years, the MLB sends out a team of some of its best players to Japan to take on the their best players.

This year, the roster was star studded, featuring young stars like Ronald Acuna, Jr, Juan Soto, Rhys Hoskins, Mitch Haniger and Eugenio Suarez. This, added to aged veterans such as Yadier Molina, Kevin Pillar and Whit Merrifield, added to a very strong team representing the MLB.

“It is a little disappointing we could not win, but it was a fun series to watch. They really do love their baseball in Japan, and that was very clear,” junior Josh Dalton said.

In the first three of the six game series, the two teams played in the Tokyo Dome. Japan took two of the first three games, the first being a 7-6 win highlighted by a walkoff home run by Yuki Yangati. This was followed up by a 12-6 rout of the MLB team. Again this time, Yangati was a big part of the win, knocking in four of the 12 runs scored, and then scoring two more of those runs himself. MLB managed a 7-3 win in the final in Tokyo, and the series moved to Hiroshima for one game. Japan took this game by a score of 5-3.

“I liked the Japan Series, I think it gave a nice new element of difference to baseball, and gave another culture a taste of how we do it,”  junior Blake Haffer said.

After Hiroshima, the series relocated one final time, to Nagoya. The MLB did not win a single game. They were also outscored by a surprising 10-6 deficit. However, this is not to take away from the MLB. Molina and Amed Rosario batted .500 in the six game set, and for Japan, Yangati never slowed down, performing in each of the games. The next scheduled Japan Series will be in 2022, barring any changes that could make this a yearly event.

Now that this series is over, and with the conclusion of the Arizona Fall League, there will be no professional baseball played until the last few days of February, when Spring Training picks back up again for the 2019 season.