The 2025 Major League Baseball season gets underway Tuesday, March 18, in Tokyo with the defending World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs squaring off. It’ll happen in the wee hours for the American viewing audience: 6:10 a.m. ET, which means it’s 5:10 in Chicago and 3:10 in L.A. Yuck.
Still, it’s an official regular-season game and that means it’s the start of the season. Baseball is back.
If we’re gonna wake up that early, we might as well have a little extra action, right? Let’s do it.
Pitching matchup (last year’s regular-season stats)
RHP Yoshinobu Yamamoto (7-2, 3.00) vs. LHP Shota Imanaga (15-3, 2.91)
This marks the first Opening Day in MLB history with two Japanese starting pitchers taking the hill and it happens in Japan, so that’s cool. Both were rookies in MLB last season and had great seasons, though Yamamoto was held to only 90 regular-season innings due to injury. Imanaga made the All-Star team. The duo is fully capable of putting on a duel.
The pick: Dodgers cover -1.5 (+110)
It’s incredibly tough to pick individual baseball games, as we all know, but the Dodgers are the better team here, even without Mookie Betts (who will miss the series due to illness). I could easily see the Cubs winning, but picking the better team is always a nice option and if we acknowledge that one-run games are relatively rare — compared to two-run and three-run games, for example — we can elect to play the run line to get plus money.
I’m much more confident in …
The play: Over 7.5 runs (-118)
The Tokyo Dome is only 328 feet down the line in both right and left field and it generally was known as a hitter-friendly yard in the past, though more recently it has been playing pitcher-friendly. I still like the power to win out here and I suspect if MLB has some of those juiced baseballs laying around they’ll be put in play. The league would surely love to see some power and it’s a huge bonus if Shohei Ohtani goes yard.
Also of note, Imanaga can get in trouble with the fly ball and the lines here are much shorter than in Wrigley Field. The Dodgers are powerful enough to take advantage. By the same token, the Cubs have plenty of punch in their lineup. I’m not expecting the duel I mentioned as possible above.
A 5-3 game gets us home here and that doesn’t even sound especially high scoring. I’m comfortable with the over here.
The play: Tommy Edman over 1.5 H+R+RBI (-135)
Edman had wrist surgery last offseason and was injured when the Dodgers quietly acquired him from the Cardinals in front of the trade deadline. He didn’t appear in a game until Aug. 19 and it took some time before he put things together, but boy did he do just that. He hit .328 with a .504 slugging percentage and 13 RBI in his 67 playoff plate appearances. He has long hit lefties well and it was his calling card in the postseason. In his regular-season career against southpaws, he’s slugged over .500 (compared to .375 against righties). Imanaga is a lefty. Sure enough, Edman faced Imanaga three times last season and homered twice.
Expect Edman to hit somewhere late in the order, meaning there might be runners on base for him with a loaded Dodgers’ offense. If he does get on base, the top of the order with Ohtani is coming around to drive him home. Even 1 for 4 with a run scored gets us home on this wager.
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