Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers Open 'Sunday Night Baseball' vs. Cardinals for MLB Schedule

After adding Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to their roster, the Los Angeles Dodgers figure to be a staple of nationally-televised games during the 2024 MLB season.

ESPN announced the Dodgers will be featured on Sunday Night Baseball twice in the first three weeks, including the first telecast of the season on March 31 against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Other Dodgers games slated to air on Sunday night include their April 14 home matchup with the San Diego Padres and a June 9 showdown with the New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium.

It was previously announced that the Dodgers and Padres were going to open the regular season in South Korea with a two-game home-and-home series on March 20 and 21.

ESPN will broadcast both of those games, as well.

As soon as Ohtani signed with the Dodgers, they were going to be the favorite team of every national network that broadcasts MLB games. It helps they are already an international brand with a huge following.

Adding the biggest star in the sport to a roster that already had Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman only helped to increase the Dodgers' profile. They took it another step further by signing Yamamoto, who has arguably been the best player in NPB since Ohtani came to the United States.

Yamamoto is coming off back-to-back Pacific League MVP seasons with the Orix Buffaloes. He won the pitching triple crown every year from 2021 to '23.

The Dodgers-Padres rivalry has lost some luster with San Diego cutting back on spending this season. The Yankees' addition of Juan Soto in a trade with the Padres does add a lot more intrigue to their three-game series against Los Angeles from June 7-9.

New York took two out of three games against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium last season. It was actually the series that may have started the Yankees' downfall because Aaron Judge injured his toe in the second game when he ran into the right-field wall to make a catch.

The Yankees were 35-25 after that game, but Judge missed the next eight weeks. By the time he returned to the lineup on July 28, they were 54-49 and nine games behind the Baltimore Orioles in the AL East.