WHEN SUMMER ARRIVED and his pitching progression intensified, Shohei Ohtani essentially stopped running. In an attempt to preserve his body for the added stress it was about to endure, Ohtani stole just two bases throughout June and July.
Now, even as he approaches the workload of a traditional starting pitcher, the aggressiveness that helped make him the first 50/50 player in baseball history is showing up again. In 12 games in August, Ohtani has attempted five steals, a shift Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts attributes to the urgency of this moment. The Dodgers are reeling, Ohtani is looking to maximize his opportunities to help, and so he’s forcing action.
It’s a small part of a bigger conflict — between what Ohtani can do and what the Dodgers believe he should.
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Ohtani has established himself as the Dodgers’ best hitter and has quickly become one of their best pitchers, but the convergence of those skills has come at a time of competing interests. On one side is a bullpen in shambles, an offense in disarray and a nine-game division lead that has been reduced to a one-game deficit — to a San Diego Padres team the Dodgers will host this weekend — in a span of six weeks. On the other is a man still getting reacclimated to a two-way role, and a team hell-bent on preserving his health.
On Wednesday night, in the middle of what became the Dodgers’ fourth straight loss, Ohtani pitched into the fifth inning for the first time since a near-two-year hiatus from pitching. With that, he also approached a limit. Getting stretched to six innings this season is “unlikely,” Roberts said. Extending beyond that is practically out of the question, no matter what occurs over this next month and a half.
The Dodgers, still analyzing how Ohtani the pitcher impacts Ohtani the hitter, are trying to keep the long term front of mind.
“It’s not easy when you’re kind of in it, and you’re competing, but he’s just such a valuable player to us offensively, as a pitcher, and so to push for an extra inning, or call it five extra innings in totality — it’s just not worth it,” Roberts said. “There’s just way too much downside, instead of just staying the course. We all feel comfortable with our plan right now.”
IN THE WAKE of his first Tommy John surgery, during the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season, Ohtani struggled mightily while resuming a two-way role. In two starts spanning 1⅔ innings, he allowed seven runs. In 153 at-bats, he tallied 29 hits. This time, success has been almost immediate. Ohtani has continued to produce like one of the game’s best offensive players and has also put up a 3.47 ERA, with 32 strikeouts and only five walks, through his first 23⅓ innings as a pitcher.
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He is throwing the hardest fastball of his career, averaging 98.3 mph, and is getting incredible results from his slider, which carries a whiff rate of 56.5% and an expected slugging percentage of .134. Ohtani threw several variations of cutters and sliders during his previous run as a two-way player from 2021 to 2023, in addition to the more horizontal sweeper. One of his current sliders, Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said, has been thrown with more downward movement to complement a splitter he still doesn’t have great feel for. It speaks to some of the traits that have resonated with Prior while working more closely with Ohtani this season — an analytical bent, a knack for quickly applying intel and an ability to deviate when needed.
“He’s got that trait,” Prior said. “He’s able to put things into practice. And when things aren’t working, he’s still able to find ways to beat you.”
Ohtani pitched from the stretch during every one of his 86 prior starts with the Angels and continued to do so as he progressed to bullpen sessions with the Dodgers last year. Then, to the surprise of the team’s coaches, he arrived in spring training and began pitching out of the windup, explaining it as a way to feel more athletic and less stagnant while coming off a second repair of his ulnar collateral ligament. As an added benefit, others noted, it would force him to incorporate more of his lower half and thus place less stress on his right arm.
The process played out methodically. Spring training acted as Ohtani’s offseason throwing program. When the team returned from a season-opening trip to Japan around the middle of March, he basically built back up again from scratch. His pitching debut occurred on June 16, about two months earlier than anticipated, because Ohtani preferred to rehab in major league environments. In a one-inning start, Ohtani reached his optimal fastball velocity with ease. It gave him confidence that he could continue to make steps forward.
The ensuing weeks only fortified that. “Really the fact that I can pitch and throw pain free is something I’ve grown to really be grateful for,” Ohtani, speaking through an interpreter, said during the All-Star Game. “This time around, it’s been a lot more smooth, and I’m really happy that I’m able to just do what I’ve always been able to do.” After one inning in his first two starts, Ohtani increased to two innings in his third and fourth and followed it with back-to-back three-inning outings. He was scheduled for four innings on a humid afternoon in Cincinnati on July 30, but his lower half cramped, prompting an earlier exit. Seven days later, Ohtani put together his best start of the year against the St. Louis Cardinals, allowing one run — on two batted balls that did not leave the infield — while striking out eight in four innings.
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The original plan called for him to once again take down four innings against the Angels on Wednesday, but the Dodgers, encouraged by his progress, upped it to five. Ohtani allowed two runs in the bottom of the second, then struck out Luis Rengifo with a nasty splitter to begin the fifth. Back-to-back singles and a double followed, placing the tying run in scoring position and prompting Ohtani’s exit after a season-high 80 pitches. His ERA stood at 2.74 when the inning began and rose by almost a full run by the time it ended.
It was another reminder that Ohtani, while effective and dynamic, is still getting used to this.
“I don’t think he’s there yet,” Roberts said recently. “I think it’s only going to get better as he gets more time doing it.”
TEOSCAR HERNÁNDEZ, LIKE many others, spent years wondering how Ohtani prepared as both a hitter and pitcher on his start days. Since becoming his teammate, he has been surprised by the process’s simplicity.
“I thought it was going to take a lot more work for him to get ready for that day,” Hernández said, “but I think it’s actually less when he’s pitching. It’s like he’s saving a lot of energy for when he has to go on the mound.” Roberts has noticed “more edge” on the days when Ohtani starts, saying he “transforms into a different type of person.” Pitching takes priority on those days. Hitting is secondary, which seems to come at a cost. Ohtani is slashing .284/.391/.629 with 17 steals and a National League-leading 43 home runs this season — numbers that, without even accounting for his pitching, should put him in line for his fourth MVP in five years. But Ohtani is only a .222 hitter on his start days, going 8-for-36 with 17 strikeouts. It’s a small sample size, but it might not be a coincidence.
“When he’s pitching, there’s an added emphasis, understandably so, on pitching,” Roberts said. “I don’t think there’s a better option, as far as not playing him or having somebody else [in the lineup]. I think that there’s a calibration that needs to happen — that’s going to happen.”
The Dodgers’ coaches organize a one-sheet scouting report tailored to both the opponent and what their starting pitchers prioritize in the days leading up to their start, then convene for a meeting hours before the first pitch. That process is no different for Ohtani, Prior said. The added element of incorporating hitting takes buy-in from other players, specifically with regard to usage of the indoor batting cages and training rooms. The goal on those days, Prior added, is to “make sure that his day is seamless all the way through.”
Ohtani’s consistency and efficiency help that cause, but it doesn’t take away from the challenge of it.
“It’s really difficult,” Dodgers starter Blake Snell said. “It’s tough to focus on both because it’s so much work getting ready for a pitcher, knowing what they can do. He has to know that, and he needs to know every hitter, too, so it’s extremely difficult. I think it’s going to take time for him to figure out his ways of, ‘How am I going to do this?'”
Even if the offensive production on his start days has been relatively scant, Ohtani’s presence in the lineup has been significant. In the third inning of his eighth start on Aug. 6, he hit a two-run homer that temporarily gave the Dodgers the lead. In the first inning of his ninth start a week later, he led off with a triple, then came around to score. The Dodgers lost both of those games, a product of a bullpen that is exceedingly shorthanded and an offense that has been too inconsistent to make up for it.
Even as a fully formed two-way player, Ohtani can’t do it all by himself — and the Dodgers wouldn’t let him anyway.
Every inning, it seems, has a cost. “For me, my eyes, first year pitching again, what we’re doing right now — essentially, it’s house money,” Roberts said. “It’s additive, being a two-way player. We have to be mindful of Shohei now and also going forward.”
