alex call

Ever since resuming two-way duties earlier this year, Shohei Ohtani had been throwing the ball well.

It wasn’t until Wednesday, however, that he finally pitched like a frontline starter, too.

Coming off his second career Tommy John surgery this year, Ohtani immediately lit up the radar gun with 100-mph fastballs and amassed gaudy strikeout totals with a devastating sweeper. In his first eight pitching starts of the season, he gave up just five runs in 16 innings for a 2.37 ERA, racked up 25 punchouts against just five walks, and looked every bit of the hard-throwing ace he was before spending a year-and-a-half rehabbing his right elbow and only serving as a designated hitter.

But, during that time, Ohtani was also throwing in only short bursts, as part of a deliberate effort to slowly build him up. He tossed one inning in his first two starts. Two innings, then three, then four, in each pair of outings after that. Rarely did he face a lineup two times through. At no point did he see the same batter three times in the same game.

He was, in effect, an opener.

And in that role, raw stuff was enough.

Recently, however, Ohtani had encountered a new challenge. Since getting the green light to make more typical five-inning starts, he had failed to actually complete the fifth in his first two attempts.

The struggles weren’t surprising, with five of the nine runs Ohtani had given up in his previous two outings coming in either the fourth or fifth innings. For all of Ohtani’s talent, it was clear there was tactical rust that still needed to be cleared.

“I think we’re still in the [process of] finding out who he is, what he is, getting his bearings for him,” manager Dave Roberts acknowledged ahead of Wednesday’s game.

“But,” the skipper added, “I’m expecting him to get through five [tonight], pitch well and just continue to get better.”

In the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over the Cincinnati Reds, Ohtani was indeed better.

Both in his results, and his process for getting there.

The right-hander not only got through five full innings of one-run ball in an 87-pitch outing — but did so by adopting a new, more unpredictable plan of attack.

Instead of leaning predominantly on fastballs and sweepers as he did earlier this year, Ohtani threw the kitchen sink at the Reds; using his curveball a career-high 23 times and his splitter a season-high 11 times, and all seven of his wicked offerings on at least seven different occasions.

Along the way, Ohtani yielded only two hits (one of them a solo home run from Noelvi Marte in the third), recorded nine strikeouts (his most in a game in more than two years) and, for the first time this year, showed the kind of ability to work deep into a game that could be pivotal in determining his October pitching role.

“Getting his sea legs back and getting going, it takes a while,” Roberts said. “So I thought tonight was one of those nights where he was locked in and worked some things out and really got into a good rhythm.”

Before Wednesday, there was still an open question over how the Dodgers might use Ohtani’s arm in the postseason.

Ideally, he could help headline their star-studded rotation, joining Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and maybe Clayton Kershaw to form the kind of deep starting pitching arsenal the Dodgers have sorely lacked in recent playoff treks.

But first, he had to show he was capable of navigating an opposing order multiple times.

“I do think that the last few starts, he was pretty predictable,” Roberts said. “And so he was smart enough to kind of suss that out, and get him off the scent.”

Against the Reds (68-66), Ohtani went to his secondary stuff early and often. His 12 curveballs in the first two innings alone were more than he had thrown in his 10 previous outings this year combined. His 34% fastball usage (including sinkers and cutters) was his lowest in a game in almost three years.

“As we’re progressing through this rehab in general, aside from the innings, I just really wanted to be able to incorporate other pitches,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “So that was really the intent going in.”

Ohtani’s command was still shaky, leading to a pair of second-inning walks that he only stranded after back-to-back strikeouts. With one out in the third, he made his lone mistake, leaving a first-pitch cutter to Marte down the middle for a home run that was clobbered to the left-field pavilion.

After that, however, Ohtani found a groove. He retired the final eight batters he faced. He finished his start by getting Cincinnati leadoff man TJ Friedl to ground out in their third meeting of the evening. And he concluded his performance with 14 swings-and-misses overall, the most whiffs he had generated in a game all year.

“He picked and chose when he used his fastball, and it just felt like they couldn’t really figure it out,” Kiké Hernández said. “They looked like they were guessing out there.”

“He’s got so many pitches,” added catcher Dalton Rushing, “and when you throw everything in the zone or around the zone, it just makes you that much better.”

By getting through five innings, Ohtani also qualified for his first pitching win of the season.

The Dodgers (77-57) made sure they didn’t squander it.

After starting the game with nine straight outs against Reds starter Nick Lodolo, the club finally broke the game open with a four-run rally in the fourth, when Ohtani led off with a single and Hernández and Rushing had two-run, bases-loaded singles. Michael Conforto added a solo insurance homer in the eighth. And the bullpen tiptoed in and out of trouble over four scoreless innings of game-sealing relief.

Collectively, the Dodgers set a nine-inning franchise record by combining for 19 strikeouts.

The victory helped the Dodgers grow their National League West lead to two games over the San Diego Padres, who dropped a series rubber match to the Seattle Mariners earlier in the day. It ran the team’s recent winning streak up to four games, its longest since the start of a 21-25 run dating back to July 4.

What was most important, though, was the way Ohtani looked, showing not only the life that remains in his surgically repaired elbow, but his ability to translate it into successful, dominant full-length outings.

“When you’re trying to go through a lineup three times, you’ve got to at times be able to go to different pitches and sequences,” Roberts added. “So, yeah, to continue to build him up and give us options, if we want to get a little bit more length out of him, is certainly helpful.”

Freeman, Call out

The Dodgers were without Freddie Freeman and Alex Call on Wednesday, but are hoping both will be available for their next game on Friday against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

Freeman was absent from the lineup because of a “stinger” in his neck and right shoulder, Roberts said. Freeman has dealt with similar issues before, and Roberts said they wanted to give him the opportunity for two consecutive days off (including Thursday’s off-day) to let it calm down.

Call was also out of the lineup after being removed from Tuesday’s game with a back flare-up. He, too, has dealt with similar issues in the past. Roberts described Call as “day-to-day” and said the team would re-evaluate his status Friday.

DENVER — Mookie Betts was the first Dodgers position player out on the field Tuesday, walking to a spot near the third-base foul line and kneeling on a mat before a coach, who began hitting soft ground balls to his right and left.

It’s a drill Betts does regularly to improve his defense. Betts’ defense, however, really isn’t a problem for the Dodgers.

A six-time Gold Glove winner in right field, Betts moved to shortstop full-time this season, turning his old position over to Teoscar Hernández. And his defense has been a problem. But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he isn’t planning any changes to his lineup for the time being.

“Are we playing our best defensive lineup? No,” Roberts said. “But I would say there’s very few teams in the big leagues playing their best defensive lineup every night. Even in a postseason race, you’ve still got to score.”

The Dodgers are definitely in a postseason race and Hernández absolutely helps them score, ranking second on the team in home runs (20) and RBIs (75) after going two for five with a run and an RBI in Tuesday’s 11-4 rout of the Colorado Rockies. He also made two nice running catches.

But then the Dodgers didn’t need much defense Tuesday, pounding out 18 hits with every player in the lineup reaching base as least once. Newcomer Alex Call led the way with a career-high four hits, including a home run and a double, scoring three runs and driving in two others while falling a triple shy of the cycle.

“I wasn’t thinking about it. I was really just trying to get on base another time,” Call, who struck out in his final at-bat in the eighth, said of the cycle. “But everybody else in the dugout was like, ‘if you hit this ball, you better keep running.’ It would have been fun to find a gap and see what would happen.”

The homer, a 453-foot blast in the second, was the longest by a Dodger this season. Yet Call still managed to get the ball back as a souvenir.

“I actually had some some friends in the stands that flew out from Wisconsin, and they tracked down the ball for me,” he said.

The homer helped Call snap out of terrible slump. He entered the game hitting .174 since coming over from Washington at the trade deadline, which wasn’t the kind of introduction he had hoped to have with this new team.

“I wanted to make a good impression. But I think you make a good impression by just showing how you work and showing how you play the game and just trusting in yourself to do what you do,” he said. “I would tell myself, ‘I’m just calibrating.’

“There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of new things going on. New coaches, new teammates, new situation, new city. You can go on. So it’s a lot.”

Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Betts and Miguel Rojas joined Hernández and Call with multiple hits for the Dodgers, who scored eight of their 11 runs with two out.

“Really, really pleased with tonight,” manager Dave Roberts said. “You saw a different ball club tonight.”

And a different Call as well.

“It’s certainly a big adjustment, especially when you walk into a clubhouse like ours,” Roberts said. “Coming from the Nationals, a bunch of young players, and you see our ball club in contention and trying to kind of figure out where you where you stand, right? He’s likable the way he plays, practices, and it was good to see him have some success.”

The Dodgers led 7-0 before the Rockies had their second baserunner, with one of those runs coming on Shohei Ohtani’s 44^th home run of the season. That made it easy for starter Emmet Sheehan (4-2), who matched a career high by going six innings, striking out a season-best seven batters to earn the win.

“We just got on the board early,” Freeman said. “When you score runs, you want to keep it going as an offense.

“[But] I don’t think anybody’s going to think about how good we did today tomorrow. Every day is a new day. We’ll go out there and give it all again.”

Etc….

Reliever Kirby Yates walked one and struck out one in a one-inning rehab appearance for Oklahoma City on Tuesday. He threw 21 pitches, 13 for strikes. Yates went on the injured list Aug. 1 with lower back pain.

Before trade rumors heated up and dream scenarios were briefly envisioned, before the Dodgers were linked to a string of big names who all wound up anywhere but Los Angeles, the team’s front office foreshadowed what proved to be a rather straightforward, unremarkable trade deadline on Thursday afternoon.

“This group is really talented,” general manager Brandon Gomes said last week. “I would argue it’s better than the team that won the World Series last year.”

“It’s really about our internal guys, and the fact that these are veteran guys that have well-established watermarks,” echoed president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, amid a July slump that fueled deadline speculation about what the team would need.

“I think the fact that we see the work they put in, how much they care, just makes it easier to bet on.”

On Thursday, maintaining faith in their current group is exactly what the Dodgers did.

The team did address its two main needs ahead of MLB’s annual midseason trade deadline. In the bullpen, it reunited with right-handed veteran Brock Stewart in a trade with the Minnesota Twins. In the outfield, it added solid-hitting, defensively serviceable 30-year-old Alex Call in a deal with the Washington Nationals.

But compared with the flurry of blockbuster deals that reverberated around them in the National League — from a head-spinning seven-player shopping spree by the San Diego Padres, to a bullpen arms race between the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies — the Dodgers’ moves were mild, tame and certainly cost-conscientious.

They didn’t splurge for one of the several established closers that were dealt for sky-high prices throughout the league. They didn’t remake their lineup by landing someone such as Steven Kwan, or any other hitter with anything close to All-Star pedigree.

In fact, the Dodgers hardly gave up much at all, content to round out the margins of their roster while parting with little in the way of prospect capital.

High-A pitchers Eriq Swan and Sean Paul Liñan (the 16th- and 20th-ranked players in their farm system by MLB Pipeline) were shipped to Washington. But otherwise, the only other departures were 40-man roster players unlikely to factor much into the team’s late-season plans: James Outman, who went to Minnesota in exchange for Stewart; Dustin May, who was dealt to the Boston Red Sox for a prospect a few months before entering free agency; and minor league catcher Hunter Feduccia, who was part of a three-team deal late Wednesday night that netted the Dodgers two pitching prospects and a journeyman catcher.

The Dodgers’ James Outman (33) celebrates after hitting a three-run home run during a game against the Miami Marlins in May.

(Marta Lavandier / Associated Press)

Compared to last year — when the Dodgers added Jack Flaherty (their eventual Game 1 starter in the World Series), Tommy Edman (the eventual National League Championship Series MVP) and Michael Kopech (a key piece in a bullpen that carried the team to a World Series title) — it all felt rather anticlimactic.

Which, as the Dodgers’ top two executives had noted the week before, appeared to be perfectly fine by them.

In Stewart, the team got a lower-cost addition in what was an expensive seller’s reliever market.

The 33-year-old has only two career saves, and is unlikely to fix the Dodgers’ ninth-inning problems. But, he is having a strong statistical season with 14 holds and a 2.38 ERA, 14th-best in the American League among relievers with 30 innings. He will give the Dodgers a stout option against right-handed hitters, who have just a .104 average and .372 OPS against him. And he comes with familiarity in the organization, still thought highly of after starting his career with the Dodgers from 2016-2019 — back before he reinvented himself with a fastball that now sits in the mid-to-upper 90 mph range.

In Call, the Dodgers gave themselves more versatility in the outfield.

The right-handed hitter has appeared in just 277 career games over four MLB seasons with the Nationals and Cleveland Guardians.

But the former third-round draft pick is having a nice 2025 season, highlighted by a .274 batting average, .756 OPS and decent (if unspectacular) defensive grades at all three outfield positions.

While Call’s role wasn’t immediately clear, he could factor into a platoon with recently resurgent left-handed hitting outfielder Michael Conforto. He also gives the Dodgers another option in center field, specifically, which would allow Andy Pages to spend more time in a more naturally suited corner outfield spot.

For those Dodgers, the moves checked off their two big priorities: Adding another dependable right-handed reliever in the bullpen, and improving their defensive options in the outfield.

What was missing from the Dodgers’ deadline, however, was the kind of big splash so many other contenders reeled off this week. The Padres acquired Mason Miller, Ramon Laureano, and Ryan O’Hearn without sacrificing any key big-league pieces. The Mets added Tyler Rogers, Ryan Helsley and Gregory Soto to their already stout bullpen, while the Phillies upgraded theirs with the addition of Jhoan Durán.

Already this year, the rest of the NL was keeping pace with what was billed as a seemingly invincible Dodgers team. Suddenly, the competition looks that much stronger, not only for the club to defend its World Series, but even to preserve the narrow three-game lead it holds over the Padres in the NL West.

The Dodgers, however, see internal improvement as the key to the rest of the season.

Already, their pitching staff is getting healthy. Tyler Glasnow, Blake Treinen and (as of this coming Saturday) Blake Snell are all back from extended injuries. Michael Kopech, Brusdar Graterol, Tanner Scott and Roki Sasaki are also scheduled to return over the final two months.

Offensively, the club is confident that slumping stars Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Tesocar Hernández will get back on track, and that Max Muncy will provide a jolt in his return from injury next week. All that — coupled with the MVP-caliber play of Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith — they believe should yield a lineup capable of repeating a run to the World Series.

“It’s always tricky when you’re in the midst of a swoon in team performance, because in those moments you feel like we need everything,” Friedman acknowledged leading into the deadline, with the team enduring a 10-14 slide in July. “So for us, it’s about, all right, let’s look ahead to August, September. Let’s look at what our best-case scenario is. Let’s look at, if we have a few injuries here and there, what areas are we exposed? What areas do we feel like we have depth?”

Apparently, the Dodgers still liked what they already had, rolling the dice on their current group while other contenders stocked up all around them.