Shohei Ohtani wore the same mask of calm that he always wears.
He spoke with detachment, as he often does.
By the time Ohtani walked into the interview room at Dodger Stadium after his team’s 6-2 defeat in Game 4 of the World Series, however, he was already devising his redemption.
“Of course, I’d like to prepare to be available for every game in case I’m needed,” Ohtani said in Japanese.
He wants to pitch again, even after he was saddled with the loss on Tuesday night by the Toronto Blue Jays.
He wants to pitch again, even after the physical demands of reaching base nine times in an 18-inning victory the previous night clearly diminished him on the mound.
If Ohtani pitches, he would almost certainly pitch in relief.
Pitching in middle relief doesn’t make sense for Ohtani, considering that when he departs the game as a pitcher, rules would require the Dodgers to play him in the outfield or lose him as a hitter for the remainder of the game.
They might as well use him as a closer, and they might as well use him in a World Series clincher, either in Game 6 or 7.
He won’t let the disappointment of his World Series pitching debut scare him away from pursuing another dream. He isn’t afraid of failure.
Game 4 was a failure.
The six-hour 39-minute game the Dodgers played the night before offered Ohtani cover. He reached base a record nine times. He homered twice and doubled twice. His leg cramped at some point. He went to sleep at 2 a.m.
But Ohtani didn’t take any of the excuses that were offered to him.
“I have no plans of saying the game yesterday was this or that,” he said.
The truth was revealed in his play.
Ohtani looked exhausted. He sweated profusely and looked as if he might be dehydrated. He looked, well, human.
His fastball uncharacteristically never touched 100 mph, but he pitched well for the most part. His only notable mistake was an elevated sweeper he threw in the third inning to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. that was deposited over the left-field wall for a two-run home run.
Ohtani struck out the side in the fourth inning, as well as the first batter he faced in the fifth. Manager Dave Roberts said that pitching coach Mark Prior approached Ohtani in the sixth innings and asked him how much he had left.
“He said he had three more innings,” Roberts said.
Ohtani couldn’t make it out of the seventh inning. In fact, he couldn’t even record an out in the seventh, starting the inning by giving up a single to Daulton Varsho and a double to Ernie Clement. With Ohtani clearly gassed, Roberts called in Anthony Banda, who allowed the two inherited runners to score.
Ohtani’s final line: Six innings, four runs, six hits, a walk and six strikeouts.
He said his goal was to pitch seven innings.
Ohtani didn’t have the game he wanted in the batter’s box, either. It didn’t help that he didn’t have any form of lineup protection. No. 9 hitter Andy Pages, who batted in front of him, was 0 for two and is now batting .080 this postseason. Mookie Betts, who batted behind him, was hitless until the eighth inning when the game was already out of reach. Betts is batting .158 in this World Series.
Ohtani walked in the first inning but was hitless in the three at-bats that followed. Not one of the 14 pitches he saw from Blue Jays starter Shane Bieber was near the middle quadrant of the plate.
Being a starting pitcher and leadoff hitter in the same game was hard enough. Being a starting pitcher and a leadoff hitter in the same game after an 18-inning battle was revealed to be downright impossible. Because if Ohtani couldn’t do it, nobody could.
Instead of moping over the setback, Ohtani has started eyeing his next boundary-pushing maneuver: To be a leadoff hitter and high-leverage reliever in the same game.
The World Series is now tied, two games apiece. The fixation Ohtani has with finding new methods to win games could be why the Dodgers finish as champions again.
Two days ago, Shohei Ohtani rolled into Dodger Stadium as a man on a mission.
After struggling for the previous couple weeks — mired in a postseason slump that had raised questions about everything from his out-of-sync swing mechanics to the physical toll of his two-way duties — the soon-to-be four-time MVP decided it was time to change something up.
Over the previous seven games, going back to the start of the National League Division Series, the $700-million man had looked nothing like himself. Ohtani had two hits in 25 at-bats. He’d recorded 12 strikeouts and plenty more puzzling swing decisions. And he seemed, in the estimation of some around the team, unusually perturbed as public criticisms of his play started to mount.
So, during the team’s off-day workout Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, ahead of Game 3 of the NL Championship Series, Ohtani informed the club’s hitting coaches he wanted to take batting practice on the field.
It was a change from his normal routine — and signaled his growing urgency to get back on track.
“If this was a regular-season situation and you’re looking at an expanse of small sample — eight, nine games, whatever it might be — he probably wouldn’t be out on the field,” manager Dave Roberts said later.
But “with the urgency [of] the postseason,” the manager continued, Ohtani “wanted to make an adjustment on his own.”
Whatever Ohtani found that day, evidently (and resoundingly) clicked. He led off Game 3 with a triple. He entered Game 4 looking more comfortable with his swing. And then, in one of the incredible individual displays ever witnessed in playoff history, he lifted the Dodgers straight into the World Series.
In a 5-1 defeat of the Milwaukee Brewers that completed an NLCS sweep and gave the Dodgers their 26th pennant in franchise history, Ohtani hit three home runs as a hitter, and struck out 10 batters over six-plus scoreless innings as a pitcher.
Shohei Ohtani pitches during Game 4 of the NLCS against the Brewers. Ohtani struck out 10 over six scoreless innings for the Dodgers.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
He made his previously disappointing playoffs a suddenly forgotten memory, earning NLCS MVP honors and to the astonished amazement of all 52,883 in attendance.
And he delivered the kind of game the baseball world dreamed about when the two-way phenom first arrived from Japan, fulfilling the prophecy that accompanied him as a near-mythical prospect eight years earlier.
Back then, Ohtani’s 100-mph fastball and wicked off-speed repertoire had tantalized evaluators. His majestic left-handed swing had tortured pitchers in his home country.
Not since Babe Ruth had the sport seen anything like him.
There were some early growing pains (and injuries) during his transition to the majors. But over the last five years, he blossomed in the game’s definitive face.
A look at the three home runs Shohei Ohtani hit in Game 4 of the NLCS on Friday.
All that had been missing, in a resume chock full of MVPs and All-Star selections and unthinkable records even “The Great Bambino” never produced, was a signature performance in October. A game in which he dominated on the mound, thrilled at the plate, and single-handedly transformed a game on the sport’s biggest stage.
During that Wednesday workout this week, Ohtani got himself ready for one, stepping into the cage during his on-field batting practice — as his walk-up song played through the stadium speakers and teammates gathered near the dugout in curious anticipation — and swatting one home run after another, including one that soared to the roof of the right-field pavilion.
On Friday, in an almost unimaginable showcase of his unprecedented talents, he managed to do exactly the same thing.
After stranding a leadoff walk in the top of the first with three-straight strikeouts, Ohtani switched from pitcher to hitter and unleashed a hellacious swing. Brewers starter José Quintana left him an inside slurve. Ohtani turned it into the first leadoff home run ever by a pitcher (in the regular season or playoffs). The ball traveled 446 feet. It landed high up the right-field stands.
Three more scoreless innings of pitching work later, Ohtani came back to the plate and hit his second home run of the night even farther. In a swing almost identical to his titanic BP drive two days prior, he launched a ball that darn near clipped the pavilion roof again, a 469-foot moonshot that landed in the concourse above the seats in right.
Somehow, there was still plenty more to come.
With the Dodgers up 4-0 at that point, Ohtani then did his best work as a pitcher, following up two strikeouts that stranded a leadoff double in the fourth — and had him excitedly fist-pumping off the mound — with two more in both the fifth and the sixth.
His fastball was humming up to triple-digits. His sweeper and cutter were keeping the Brewers off balance. His splitter wasn’t touched once any of the five times they tried to swing at it.
Shohei Ohtani runs the bases after hitting his third home run of the game against the Brewers in Game 4 of the NLCS at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
Anything he did immediately became magic.
Ohtani’s loudest roar came in the bottom of the seventh, after his pitching start had ended on a walk and a single led off the top half of the inning.
For the third time, he flung his bat at a pitch over the plate. He sent a fly ball sailing deep in a mild autumn night. He rounded the bases as landed beyond the center field fence.
Three home runs. Six immaculate innings. A tour de force that sent the Dodgers to the World Series.
All of it, just two days removed from Ohtani being seemingly at his lowest.
All of it, when the baseball world was most closely watching.
Dodgers players and coaches celebrate after sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.
It was a stressful decision. But it shouldn’t have been so consequential.
In the middle of the fifth inning Tuesday night, Shohei Ohtani returned to the Dodgers’ dugout after a clean inning of work on the mound. Waiting for him at the top step was manager Dave Roberts, who (according to the SportsNet LA television broadcast) wanted to ask how he was feeling.
With any other pitcher, there would have been no such discussion.
Over his five innings against the Philadelphia Phillies, Ohtani had not given up a hit. He had thrown only 68 pitches. And he was flashing the kind of dominance that would have made a no-hitter feel like a real possibility.
Ohtani, however, is not like any other pitcher.
He is a two-way star, coming off a second career Tommy John surgery, who has been managed with kid gloves and Bubble Wrap in his return to pitching duties this year. He started his comeback by pitching one inning, then two, then so on until he built up to five. Weeks ago, the team — in consultation with the reigning MVP — decided to avoid pushing him past the five-inning mark until at least October.
His health, both on the bump and at the plate, remains the priority.
Thus, while Ohtani reportedly told Roberts he still felt good, he laughed and said it was up to the veteran manager to decide whether or not to extend his pitching outing.
Roberts, in a continuation of the team’s careful handling of Ohtani this year, decided against it.
The result, in a continuation of the struggles from the team’s beleaguered bullpen, was disastrous.
After pulling Ohtani with a four-run lead, the Dodgers watched their relief corps melt down in predictable, reminiscent fashion. Justin Wrobleski gave up five consecutive hits with one out in the sixth, including a three-run home run to Brandon Marsh that broke open the inning. Edgardo Henriquez made matters worse, replacing Wrobleski — amid a chorus of boos directed at Roberts — later in the inning only to give up another long ball to Max Kepler.
By the time it was over, the Phillies had scored six runs to take the lead. And though the Dodgers would battle back to tie the score in the eighth, the bullpen faltered again in the ninth, when Blake Treinen gave up a decisive three-run, two-out home run to Rafael Marchán in the Phillies’ eventual 9-6 win.
For the five innings Tuesday, Ohtani displayed utter dominance against the only team to have already clinched a division title.
His fastball was playing up, eclipsing 100 mph seven times and topping out at 101.7 mph. His secondary stuff was electric, a mix of sliders and sweepers and curveballs and splitters that kept the Phillies off balance and able to make only benign contact.
After a two-out walk to Bryce Harper in the first inning, Ohtani retired the final 13 he faced. He got only six total whiffs, but was more pitch-efficient because of it, with his 68 throws coming in 19 shy of his previous season-high (he threw 87 pitches in his only other full five-inning start on Aug. 27).
That’s why, once Ohtani raced back toward the dugout to transition from pitcher to hitter in the middle of the fifth, his removal wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Why, after Roberts conversed with Ohtani from the top step, he found first baseman Freddie Freeman laughing at him back on the bench, sensing the stressfulness of his manager’s decision (which represented the ninth time in Roberts’ Dodgers tenure he had pulled a pitcher from a no-hitter in the fifth inning or later).
By that point, of course, the game shouldn’t have been in danger either way.
The Dodgers had scored three runs in the second inning on home runs from Alex Call and Kiké Hernández. They added another in the fourth off Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, handing the Cy Young contender just his fourth start this season of more than three earned runs.
But then, a bullpen that had been burned repeatedly in recent weeks (including in a 10-inning loss in the opening game of this series Monday night) played with fire again.
Wrobleski, a rookie left-hander who had been one of the Dodgers’ better relievers of late, had Rafael Marchán break up the no-no with a one-out single, Harrison Bader and Kyle Schwarber to load the bases with two more hits after that, Harper to gap a double that brought two runs across, and Marsh to go deep on a hanging 0-2 slider for a go-ahead three-run shot.
Henriquez, another rookie who had been sharp in limited action this year, yielded another home run to Kepler two batters later.
Just like that, it was 6-4 Phillies.
Ohtani helped the Dodgers get back in the game with his bat. In the eighth, he clobbered a leadoff home run deep to right field for his 50th long ball of the season, making him just the sixth player in MLB history with consecutive 50-homer campaigns.
The Dodgers kept the rally going after that, loading the bases for Call to hit a tying sacrifice fly.
Alas, the Dodgers’ bullpen did what it does best once more in the ninth, coming unglued at the worst possible moment.
After getting two quick outs to start the inning, Treinen gave up a double to Weston Wilson (the No. 7 hitter who entered with a .202 average). He fell behind 3-and-0 to Bryson Stott (the No. 8 hitter) to trigger an intentional walk. Then, in a 3-and-1 count to Marchán (the No. 9 hitter and backup catcher for the Phillies), he served up an inside cutter that Marchán pulled down the line, getting just enough behind it to send it bouncing off the top of the short right-field wall.
Nine painful runs, in four miserable innings of Dodgers relief.
Another loss, that wasted Ohtani’s no-hit (but short-lived) masterpiece.
It might be a cliché this time of year, how injured players who return after the trade deadline can serve as de facto deadline acquisitions themselves.
Immediately after Muncy went down with a knee injury in early July, the club’s lineup entered a deep midseason slump. Its actual deadline acquisitions, which included only one hitter in outfielder Alex Call, had underwhelmed the fan base.
Thus, when Muncy returned to action Monday night, the Dodgers were desperately hoping the veteran slugger could provide a spark.
Twenty-four hours later, he did it with two thunderous swings.
In the Dodgers’ 12-6 win over the St. Louis Cardinals, Muncy officially christened his comeback with a four-for-five, four-RBI performance that included a pair of no-doubt home runs off Miles Mikolas — picking up almost exactly where he left off before suffering a July 2 knee injury that he feared would end his season.
“As I was laying there on the ground that night, I thought for sure this is it,” Muncy recalled this week, after not only recovering from what proved to be just a bone bruise, but doing it two weeks faster than the initial six-week timeline the team had expected.
“It’s hard to stay positive in a moment like that,” Muncy added, while reliving Michael A. Taylor’s slide into his left knee a month earlier. “But extremely thankful and blessed to be back on a baseball field this year.”
Muncy did have some rust to knock off, going hitless in three at-bats with a walk and strikeout in his first game back Monday night against crafty Cardinals right-hander Sonny Gray.
On Tuesday, however, Mikolas gave him the chance to do some long-awaited damage.
In the first inning, after Shohei Ohtani doubled and scored on a Freddie Freeman sacrifice fly, Muncy clobbered a center-cut, first-pitch sinker 416 feet into the right-field pavilion, giving the Dodgers a quick 2-0 lead.
In the third, after the Cardinals leveled the score on Nolan Gorman’s two-run homer off Emmet Sheehan an inning earlier, Muncy went deep again, whacking an elevated fastball 404 feet for a two-run blast.
The Dodgers (66-48) wouldn’t relinquish the lead again, going on to their first double-digit scoring effort since June 22 thanks to a five-run rally in the seventh, when Muncy also added an RBI single, and two more runs in the eighth, when Muncy tacked on his fourth hit.
There were other positive signs for the Dodgers’ recently scuffling lineup on Tuesday.
Mookie Betts, who was mired in a career-long five-game, 22 at-bat hitless streak, recorded three knocks: A double right before Muncy’s second homer in the third, a line-drive single in the fifth, and a seeing-eye grounder in the eighth.
Andy Pages, who was batting just .211 since the All-Star break, made hard contact on doubles in the sixth and the seventh.
And Teoscar Hernández, who was hitting just .213 since returning from a groin strain in May, came roaring to life with a two-homer game, going back-to-back with Muncy on a solo home run in the third before smashing a game-sealing three-run drive after Muncy’s RBI single in the seventh.
Leading up to the deadline, manager Dave Roberts cited that subset of slumping hitters as potential quasi-deadline additions in their own right. Part of the reason for the team’s relative inaction at the deadline was its trust that the healthy, but scuffling, members of its lineup would get back on track down the stretch.
Still, Muncy’s eventual return had long been seen as the Dodgers’ biggest potential boon, especially after they went from leading the majors in scoring before he got hurt to ranking last in runs over the 25 games he missed.
“We’ve certainly missed him,” Roberts said ahead of Muncy’s return Monday. “The night he came off the field, you’re starting to think of it potentially being season-ending. So to get him back in a month, we’re all excited. He’s put in a lot of work to get back with this timeline. And yeah, we’ve needed him.”
Two games in, the importance of his return is already being felt.
Between now and October, the Dodgers will be evaluating their increasingly healthy pitching staff, trying to identify the best 13 arms for their World Series push.
And for now, they remain hopeful that rookie right-hander Roki Sasaki could be part of that mix; writing an unexpected end to what once seemed like a lost 2025 campaign.
After being one of the biggest stories of the Dodgers’ offseason this winter, Sasaki has become more of an afterthought in the eight months since.
Back in January, the Dodgers’ acquisition of the Japanese phenom felt like a coup. The 23-year-old right-hander was billed as a future star in the making. He came advertised with a 100-mph fastball, devastating splitter and seemingly limitless potential as an ace-caliber pitcher. Most of all, he was a bargain addition financially, requiring only a $6.5-million signing bonus (for six years of team control) after making a rare early career jump from Japan.
The reality, to this point, has been nowhere near the expectation.
At the start of the season, Sasaki made eight underwhelming starts — with wild command and declining fastball velocity contributing to a 4.72 ERA — before being sidelined by a shoulder impingement.
Since then, he has sat on the injured list and largely faded into the background. An important piece of the Dodgers’ long-term plans, sure. But a wild card, at best, to contribute to their World Series defense this fall.
Lately, however, the narrative has started to shift again.
Over the last month, Sasaki has finally started progressing in a throwing program, twice facing hitters in recent live batting practice sessions. He has another three-inning simulated game scheduled for Friday, after which he could go out on a minor-league rehab assignment.
And after his early-season struggles to locate pitches or reach triple-digit velocities, the Dodgers have been encouraged with the changes he has made to his delivery and pitch mix. In a bullpen session Tuesday, Sasaki hit 96 mph with his four-seam fastball while also showcasing a two-seamer he has added during his time injured.
“I’m expecting to see pounding of the strike zone, conviction behind the throws, and just a better performer,” manager Dave Roberts said of Sasaki, who could rejoin the active roster near the end of August.
“At the end of the day, I just think that Roki has got to believe that his stuff plays here, which we all believe it does.”
The team’s title chances, of course, don’t exactly hinge on Sasaki. If their current rotation stays healthy, they should have more than enough starting pitching depth to navigate another deep October run.
But getting Sasaki back would provide some welcome pitching insurance.
He could also be a candidate to eventually shift to the bullpen, with Roberts leaving open the possibility of using him as a hard-throwing reliever come the end of the season (even though they intend to stretch him out to six innings as starter for now).
“We’re gonna take the 13 best pitchers [into the playoffs],” Roberts said. “If Roki is a part of that in some capacity, then that would be great. And if he’s not, then he won’t be.”
For much of the summer, it seemed like a long shot the Dodgers would be having such conversations about Sasaki at this point.
For all the hype that accompanied his arrival, the results made him look like more a long-term project.
In his eight early-season starts, his fastball averaged only 96 mph, and was punished by opposing hitters for its flat, relatively easy-to-hit shape. His slider was a work-in-progress, leaving him without a reliable third pitch.
His go-to splitter did induce the occasional awkward swing from opponents, and garnered much praise from teammates. But Sasaki failed to consistently use it to generate chase out of the strike zone.
As a result, he pitched from behind in the count too often (evidenced by his 24-to-22 strikeout-to-walk ratio). He seemingly lacked confidence to attack opposing hitters over the plate (and gave up six home runs in just 34 ⅓ innings when he did). And once he went down with his shoulder injury (which was similar to one that had bothered him during his Japanese career), the early stages of his rehab did not go smoothly, with Sasaki requiring a pain-relieving injection in June almost two months after initially going on the IL.
Since then, though, Sasaki has finally turned a corner.
He told reporters Tuesday that he now has “no pain” and is feeling “better about being able to throw harder” upon his return.
He has used his recent ramp-up as an opportunity to reset his mechanics, and clean up an arm path that Dodgers personnel believed was affected by his shoulder problems at the start of the season.
“What we saw early on is probably not indicative of what everybody expects and has seen from him in the past when he’s been 100%,” pitching coach Mark Prior said.
While out injured, Sasaki has also had an opportunity to sit back and watch big-league games up close, something Roberts and Prior insisted would be beneficial for a young pitcher who came to the majors with only 394 career innings over four seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league.
“He’s down there in that [dugout] stairwell when we’re at home pretty much all nine innings,” Prior said. “You can’t not learn by just watching and at least having some experience … I think he understands now the importance of, ‘I’ve got to be ahead. I’ve got to attack the strike zone.’ He doesn’t necessarily need it to be executed precisely, but it’s got to be in the strike zone. You can’t be living behind in counts.”
There may be no bigger sign of growth than Sasaki’s embrace of the two-seam fastball.
Before he got hurt, it was a pitch that people within the organization thought could help keep hitters off his diminished four-seam heater. Prior said that, before Sasaki was shut down, the coaching staff had initiated a conversation about adding it to his repotoire.
“Clearly, everybody would love a fast, high-riding four-seam,” Prior said. “But even that being said, these [hitters] have gotten a lot better and know how to attack those things. So just giving them different looks and stuff to lean into and keeping the righties honest, just gives him some flexibilities and some options.”
The hope is that it will help Sasaki be more competitive when he returns, and complement the rest of his highly-touted arsenal.
That, when coupled with improved health and refined mechanics, will trigger a late-season resurgence capable of making him an option for the postseason roster.
“My every intention is to get back on the major league mound and pitch again,” Sasaki said through interpreter Will Ireton. “With that being said, I do need to fight for the opportunity too. I don’t think that I’ll just be given the opportunity right away.”
ATLANTA — The center fielder for the Dodgers’ Class A Great Lakes affiliate is a former first-round draft pick. The other two outfielders were selected for the Futures Game.
Who’s the best outfielder on the team?
“We’re all good, brother,” said the left fielder, Josue De Paula. “We’ve all got talent. We all excel somewhere.
“Us together? It’s a dream squad. I don’t feel like you see that much talent that often.”
De Paula flashed his considerable talent Saturday, hitting a three-run homer that decided the National League’s 4-2 victory over the American League and earned him the Futures Game most valuable player award.
The only other Dodgers prospect to win that award: infielder Chin-Lung Hu, in 2007.
“This is definitely motivating for me,” De Paula said. “Mentally, it was a big moment, to prove, especially to myself, who I really am.”
De Paula’s home run traveled 416 feet, triggering a round of fireworks in the sky and a lump in De Paula’s throat as he crossed home plate.
“I was overtaken by emotion,” he said, “especially doing it in front of my dad.”
His father lives in New York City. The Midwest League is far away.
Perhaps the major leagues are not so far away. De Paula is 20, but he is in his fourth pro season. The Dodgers signed him out of the Dominican Republic, but he was born in New York City and he is a second cousin of former NBA All-Star Stephon Marbury.
“Baseball called me,” De Paula said. “I fell in love with it at a young age.”
Zyhir Hope, the Great Lakes right fielder, also appeared in the Futures Game. He singled ahead of De Paula and scored on the home run, so he was waiting at home plate to congratulate De Paula.
“We do it often,” De Paula said, smiling.
Hope, also 20, smiled when asked what he liked about De Paula’s game.
“Everything,” he said. “He takes it easily. He’s calm, relaxed and laid back, but he works hard. He’s a great dude.”
Before the season, Baseball Prospectus ranked De Paula and Hope among the top 10 prospects in baseball. Currently, MLB Pipeline ranks both among the top 40.
De Paula offers power, speed, and advanced plate discipline, although scouts wonder whether he can stick in left field or might need to try first base or designated hitter. Hope has advanced from a good-fielding prospect with uncertain hitting skills in the Chicago Cubs’ system — the Dodgers got him in the Michael Busch trade — to a gap hitter with speed.
This is the time of year, of course, where contenders trade prospects to fill major league needs. Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, rarely trades his top prospects, and De Paula ranks No. 1 in the Dodgers’ farm system. On the other hand, the Dodgers need pitching help.
“I do want to get to L.A. I hope that’s in God’s plans,” De Paula said. “At the end of the day, we never make the decisions. We’ve just got to focus on what we need to do on the field and whatever happens, happens.
“But I really do hope I become a Dodger and I stay there for a very long time.”
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The glasses might’ve come first. But it was a light bulb moment with the swing that made the most profound change.
Just over a month into the season this year, veteran Dodgers slugger Max Muncy was in a desperate search for answers.
Through the team’s first 30 games, his batting average started with a one and his home run total was stuck on zero. His role as the team’s starting third baseman was being called into question, fueling early-season speculation that the team would need to replace him before the trade deadline. He was absorbing daily criticism from fans, while trying not to succumb to internal self-flagellation.
The 10-year veteran had gone through cold starts before. But nothing quite so frustrating as this.
“It’s a privilege to play under this pressure, and it’s something I’ve always thrived on, but it doesn’t mean it’s been easy,” Muncy said on the last day of April. “It’s been a rough month.”
Starting that afternoon, however, Muncy made one big change. Upon learning he had astigmatism in his right eye, he began wearing glasses at the plate to balance out his vision. In his first game using them, he hit his first home run of the year.
Then, nine days later, came the real breakthrough.
After spending the entirety of the winter tinkering with his swing, and most of the opening month trying to calibrate his mechanics, everything suddenly synced up during a May 9 at-bat in Arizona.
Muncy took a quick hack at a high fastball from Diamondbacks reliever Kevin Ginkel. He lined a ninth-inning, game-tying single through the right side of the infield in the Dodgers’ eventual win at Chase Field. And he realized that, finally, he’d found a feeling in the batter’s box he’d been chasing the last several years.
A demarcation point had just been established.
And Muncy’s season has been transformed ever since.
“The funny thing about baseball is, sometimes, it just takes one swing, one play, one pitch to lock someone in,” he said. “And ever since that day, I’ve had that feeling in the back of my head. Like, ‘That’s what it’s supposed to feel like.’”
In 36 games before then, Muncy was hitting .188 with only one home run, eight RBIs and 43 strikeouts; his early days with the glasses not even leading to an immediate turnaround.
But since May 9, he has been one of the best hitters in baseball, and on one of the most prolific stretches of his entire career. Over his last 43 games, Muncy’s batting average is .313, a personal best over any span that long in the majors. He has 12 home runs and a whopping 47 RBIs, a major-league-leading total in that stretch. According to Fangraphs’ all-encompassing wRC+ statistic, only Ronald Acuña Jr., Cal Raleigh, Aaron Judge and Ketel Marte have been more productive at the plate.
And, most important, he has re-established himself as a central cog in the Dodgers’ lineup.
“He’s one of our most trusted hitters,” manager Dave Roberts said this past weekend. “I haven’t always been able to say that.”
Being a better, more trusted hitter has been a work in progress for Muncy ever since the devastating elbow injury he suffered at the end of 2021.
In Muncy’s prime years with the Dodgers from 2018-2021, he not only blossomed as one of the best sluggers in baseball by belting 118 home runs over a four-year stretch, but did so while posting a .246 batting average and .371 on-base-percentage; solid marks for a power threat occupying a key role in the middle of the Dodgers’ order.
At the core of that all-around approach was an ability to handle pitches to all parts of the plate — none more important than elevated fastballs at the top of the strike zone.
Dodgers first baseman Max Muncy writhes in pain after colliding with the Milwaukee Brewers’ Jace Peterson during the final regular-season game in 2021.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“When I’m going well, I’m a really good high-fastball hitter,” Muncy said earlier this year.
“When Max is covering that pitch,” added hitting coach Aaron Bates, “it allows him to do so many other things as a hitter.”
Coming off his elbow injury, however, getting to high heat became a weakness in Muncy’s game. For much of the next two years, when he still hit for power but batted only a combined .204, he felt “it was really hard to replicate” his old swing. Last year, he made some incremental progress — when he batted .232 — but was stalled by an oblique strain that cost him the middle three months of the season.
Thus, this winter, Muncy set his mind to rediscovering his old mechanics.
“It really wasn’t that big of a change,” he said. “It was just going back to what I did when I first got here from 2018 to 2021. The same philosophy I had all those years.”
The work started in January, when Bates and fellow Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc visited Muncy at his home in Texas and crafted a simple focus for the 34-year-old’s offseason work: Purposely practice hitting grounders and line drives on a lower trajectory, in hopes it would train his swing to stay on top of the ball even on pitches up in the zone.
“You know he’s naturally going to have loft in his swing to elevate the baseball easily,” Bates said. “So that was a focus point for him, making sure he can hit a hard line drive on a pitch up in the zone, not necessarily trying to elevate it more than he needs to.”
A sound theory, with some disastrous early results.
At the start of the year, Muncy’s new swing thought bred other unexpected bad habits. In his effort to stay on top of the ball, he was opening up his backside and letting his front shoulder drift too far forward at the start of his move. As a result, Muncy had trouble squaring the ball and keeping his bat level through the strike zone. It led to not only a lack of power, but a diminished ability to distinguish the kind of pitches being thrown — evidenced by a nearly 32% strikeout rate in April that was seventh-highest among MLB hitters.
“That’s where it’s tough playing the sport,” Muncy said. “Because you can’t chase results immediately, even though you kind of have to. You have to chase the process in the long run.”
And even as external pressure over his dwindling production mounted, Muncy said the club’s coaches and front office assured him he’d have time to keep working through it.
“It’s easier to stick with something long-term when that’s the case,” Muncy said. “And for me, that’s been my entire career. Trust the process, not the result.”
During late April, Muncy’s process included a visit to the same eye doctor who had diagnosed Kiké Hernández with eye astigmatism last year; a discovery that prompted Hernández to start wearing glasses, and keyed a sudden offensive turnaround in the second half of the season.
Turned out, Muncy had a similar problem. Though his vision was 20/12, astigmatism in his right eye had made him left-eye dominant, a subtle but limiting dynamic for a left-handed hitter.
Thus, on the last day of the month, Muncy also started wearing prescription-lensed glasses, and christened the new eyewear with a home run in his first game using them.
“It’s not necessarily something that I need,” Muncy said. “But just any chance at all it evens out both eyes for me, I’ve been taking it.”
Yet, in his first week using them, he still went just six-for-28 with nine strikeouts and only five walks. He was still grinding through his adjustments to his mechanics. He was still waiting for one swing where everything would feel synced up.
When Muncy came to the plate in that May 9 game against the Diamondbacks to face Ginkel, he surveyed the situation, put his swing mechanics out of his head, and tried to focus on only one objective.
“It was guy on second, no outs,” Muncy recalled, “so I was trying to give up the at-bat, get the ball on the ground to the right side of second base, and move the runner from second to third.”
Throughout his career, this is when Muncy is at his best. When his mind isn’t clouded by the pressure to produce, or the particulars of his swing. When he’s “going out there and just trying to play the situation,” he explained. “Like, ‘What is my at-bat calling for in this moment?’”
And on that day in Arizona, with the Dodgers trailing by one run in the ninth, that simplified mindset gave Muncy his moment of long-awaited clarity.
Ginkel threw a 95 mph fastball up near Muncy’s chest. The slugger hit it with the kind of quick, level swing he’d spent all winter attempting to craft.
As the ball rocketed through the right side of the infield for a game-tying single, Muncy felt a lightbulb go off as he pulled into first base.
Fans cheer as the Dodgers’ Max Muncy rounds the bases after hitting a grand slam on June 22 against the Washington Nationals.
(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)
“I was so short and direct to it, it just triggered something in my head,” Muncy said. “It kind of took all the stuff I’d been working on, even going back to the winter, and was like, ‘OK, this is how I’m trying to get it to feel.’”
Muncy hasn’t looked back ever since.
By being able to cover the top of the strike zone, he hasn’t had to cheat on fastballs or hunt on tougher pitches to hit around his knees. When coupled with the glasses that have helped him better differentiate velocity from spin, he’s been able to be selective and wait out mistakes.
“There’s been spells in his career where it was the three [true] outcomes and that was it,” Roberts said, long a believer in Muncy’s ability to be a more potent hit collector, rather than just a high-powered, high-strikeout slugging presence. “Now, I think he’s a complete hitter. So you see the runs batted in, the homers, the quality of at-bats all tick up.”
During this torrid two-month stretch, highlights have come in bunches for Muncy. He’s had two seven-RBI games and another with six. He hit a game-tying home run in the ninth inning against the New York Mets on June 3. He had two grand slams in the span of three games last week.
He has gone from the subject of trade deadline rumors to a fan-voting finalist to make the All-Star Game.
He knows it’s still only been two months; that, in a sport as fickle as baseball, the feeling he has discovered at the plate can just as quickly disappear again.
But for the first time in years, he’s healthy, in sync and possessing total clarity — in both vision and mind — every time he steps to the dish.
“This is definitely more of what I was envisioning,” Muncy said this weekend, reflecting back on the early-season struggles and laborious swing work over the winter that preceded his two-month tear.
“Now, I have the confidence to know I can accomplish pretty much anything I want to do for that situation. Whereas, before, you don’t always have that.”
With his arm forming a 90-degree angle at his elbow, Shohei Ohtani clenched his right hand like an umpire signaling an out.
The actual home-plate umpire, Tripp Gibson, didn’t make the same gesture.
Fernando Tatis Jr. was ruled safe at home. Three batters into his first game pitching for the Dodgers, Ohtani was charged with a run.
Ohtani pointed his glove at Gibson. He screamed. He turned his head in the direction of the Dodgers dugout, waving his glove as if to urge the bench to challenge the call.
The Dodgers saw another side of Ohtani on Monday in their 6-3 victory over the San Diego Padres, but that entailed more than him taking the mound and throwing a couple of 100-mph fastballs.
Ohtani the pitcher, they learned, isn’t as playful as Ohtani the hitter. He snarls. He barks. He’s emotional, even downright combative at times.
This temperament could explain why Ohtani pitched the way he did in his first game in two seasons — why he threw as hard as he did, why he couldn’t control his fastball, why his sweeper lacked its usual movement.
Hitting is what Ohtani does for fun. Pitching is what he treats as work, and Ohtani was amped up to return to the mound.
“I was more nervous than when I’m just a hitter,” Ohtani said in Japanese.
His performance reflected that. In the one inning he pitched as an opener, he was charged with a run and two hits. He threw 28 pitches, of which only 16 were strikes.
Shohei Ohtani takes the mound for the Dodgers for the first time since signing with the team.
“My arm was moving a little too fast, so pitches were going more to the glove side than I anticipated,” Ohtani said.
His first pitch was a 97.6-mph fastball that was fouled off by Tatis. He averaged 99.1 mph with his four-seam fastball and 97.4 mph with his sinker, throwing 13 pitches at 98 mph or faster. He was clocked at 100.2 mph against Luis Arraez and 99.9 against Manny Machado.
That was considerably faster than Ohtani threw in live batting practice and considerably faster than the Dodgers were expecting him to throw in this game.
“I wanted to be around 95-96 as much as possible,” Ohtani said.
Ohtani gave up a single to Tatis on a 99.1-mph fastball that was left over the heart of the plate. Tatis advanced to second base on a 98.3-mph wild pitch and third on a single that Arraiz hit off a 98-mph sinker.
With runners on the corners, Ohtani thought he struck out Machado on a sweeper, but he was ruled to have checked his swing. Ohtani pointed at Gibson and appealed for a strike but to no avail. Ohtani unironically made a Joe Kelly pouty face.
Two pitches later, Machado scored Tatis with a sacrifice fly to center field.
“A little more animated than he usually is,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani.
Roberts already knew Ohtani would be like this, as he’d spoken to people familiar with Ohtani, including former Angels manager Phil Nevin.
“I guess as a pitcher, he shows a lot more emotion and gets frustrated when things don’t go well or he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do on the mound,” Roberts said with a chuckle.
Ohtani was more in control when he retired Xander Bogaerts for the final out of the inning, and he pointed to the at-bat as a highlight.
“I was able to relax and pitch,” he said.
Ohtani started by attacking him with a sweeper that was called for a strike. He followed that up with a 95.6-mph sinker that missed low, but forced Bogaerts to ground out for the third out on another sinker, this one on the inside half of the plate. That pitch was 95.4 mph.
After that, Ohtani strapped on protective gear and slipped on batting gloves while standing on the railing in front of the Dodgers’ bench. As a hitter, he finished the game two for four with a walk, two runs scored and two runs batted in.
In the batter’s box and on the basepaths, his demeanor softened. By the time he reached third base in the Dodgers’ five-run fourth inning, he was sharing laughs with Machado.
On the field, he’s produced the first 50-50 season in baseball history and won a World Series. Off it, he’s sold everything from unsweetened green tea to skin-care products.
As it was, it felt as if Shohei Ohtani was everywhere. In reality, this was just half of the package.
The Dodgers are finally about to have the complete version of Ohtani, the right-handed pitcher with a 100-mph fastball who also launches 470-foot homers as a left-handed hitter.
Two-Way Shohei is back.
Ohtani will pitch his first game for the Dodgers on Monday, the team naming him as its starter for the opening game of a four-game series against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium.
What was already a one-of-a-kind show will evolve into something that might never be seen again after Ohtani retires — not at Dodger Stadium, not at any other major league stadium, not anywhere in the world.
The news of Ohtani’s mound return became a source of anticipation in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, with Clayton Kershaw describing himself as “super excited.”
“I think we all are,” Kershaw said. “I think as fans of the game and just seeing him day in and day out get ready to pitch and do both, it’s going to be really fun, whether it’s one inning or whatever it is.”
The Dodgers plan to deploy Ohtani for an inning or two as an opener.
For most of this season, the Dodgers operated under the assumption that Ohtani wouldn’t pitch until after the All-Star break. The change of plans doesn’t represent a speeding up of a timeline as much as it does a modification of the route that will be taken to a final destination.
Ohtani last pitched in 2023 when he was still playing for the Angels, and he didn’t pitch in his first season for the Dodgers last year as he recovered from his second Tommy John surgery.
Shohei Ohtani pitches in the bullpen at Dodger Stadium on June 4.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
In recent weeks, he prepared for his mound return by pitching to hitters in live batting practice. He threw 44 pitches in three innings in his third and most recent session.
However, throwing live batting practice and taking four or five at-bats in an actual game as a designated hitter was like “playing a doubleheader for him,” Roberts said.
To eliminate the exhausting cycle of warming up to throw, cooling down after, and warming up again to play a game, the Dodgers figured they could build up Ohtani’s arm in games. Whatever modest Ohtani’s contributions can make from the mound, the Dodgers will take them. With multiple starters on the injured list, the bullpen has shouldered a disproportionate share of the pitching load.
Because Ohtani wouldn’t take up an extra roster spot, Kershaw pointed out, “We don’t have to lose a pitcher or anything, so if he throws an inning a week, it’s great.”
Ohtani will likely pitch about once a week, with every start expected to be about an inning longer than the previous one. Theoretically, he could pitch four times before the All-Star break, which would stretch him out to be ready to pitch five innings when the Dodgers resume play.
While Ohtani remains in a ramp-up phase and his fastball has sat in the 94-95 mph range in his live bullpen sessions, still not at the 98-99 mph he once averaged. However, team officials believe he is ready to compete at the major league level because of the movement of his pitches.
Ohtani evidently thinks so as well.
“I think I’m approaching a level that is sufficient to pitch in games,” Ohtani said in Japanese on Saturday night.
His 25 homers are the most in the National League. He is also batting .297 with 41 runs batted in. The Dodgers’ leadoff hitter, he’s also stolen 11 bases.
Ohtani said didn’t think his offensive production would be diminished by pitching.
“I played as just a DH last year,” he said, “but to do both at the same time is my usual style.”
Ohtani played six seasons with the Angels, and he was a two-way player in four of them. His last three seasons with them made up what was arguably the greatest three-year stretch in the history of the sport, as he won two MVP awards and would have won a third if not for a 62-home season by Aaron Judge.
He has an opportunity now to match, or even surpass, that. Only this time, he will do so on a team that has a chance to reward him for his unprecedented achievements with the postseason glory he craves.
