Shohei Ohtani announces he and wife Mamiko are having a baby

LOS ANGELES - World Series champion Shohei Ohtani announced he and his wife Mamiko Tanaka are adding another member to the family's lineup.

Ohtani announced on his social media page on December 28 that the couple is expecting a baby.

"Cant wait for the little rookie to join our family soon," Ohtani wrote in the post.

The news comes less than a year after the Los Angeles Dodgers star revealed he and Mamiko Tanaka were married. The baby will join the couple's dog Dekopin, or Decoy, who has made several public appearances around Dodger Stadium.

Ohtani did not specify when the couple expects to welcome the little one into the world.

Not much is known about the couple, other than their occasional public appearances. However, in previous reports, Mamiko seems to have gotten a massive stamp of approval from her in-laws as her father-in-law, Toru Otani, published an open letter in Japan praising her during Shohei's historic 2024 MLB season.

In the open letter published by Sponichi's Naoyuki Yanagihara back in September 2024, Toru Otani said Mamiko helped Shohei get through the Ippei Mizuhara fraud scandal from earlier in the year.

"There was the fraud case before the season started, and it left me feeling very worried," Toru's Sept. 2024 post read, in translated English. "But as a married man, you have someone by your side that you can talk to anytime, which gave me relief. Without Mamiko, you would not be where you are today."

PHOTO: Shohei Ohtani on Instagram

Toru Otani added in the Sept. 2024 post that his daughter-in-law Mamiko has been instrumental in helping Shohei perform better on the field.

"I feel like you're able to focus more in games after you got married," the dad's letter read. "You seemed to have loosened up a little, rounding up your sharp edges."

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