And Shohei Ohtani is expected to be their starting pitcher.
In what will be just four days removed from his six-plus-inning, 93-pitch start in Game 4 of this World Series, Ohtani will likely serve as the team’s opener in Saturday’s winner-take-all contest, according to a person with knowledge of the situation not authorized to speak publicly.
While Ohtani almost certainly won’t make a full-length start, he should be able to get through at least two or three innings (depending on how laborious his outing is). Four or five innings might not be out of the question, either, even in what will be only his second career MLB outing pitching on three days’ rest.
The only time Ohtani did so was in 2023, when he followed a rain-shortened two-inning start at Fenway Park against the Red Sox with a seven-inning outing four days later.
Saturday, of course, will come under entirely different circumstances, in what will be the first seventh game in a World Series since 2019.
By starting Ohtani, the Dodgers would ensure they wouldn’t lose his bat for the rest of the game, thanks to MLB’s two-way rules. If he were to enter in relief during the game, the only way he could stay in afterward is if he shifted to the outfield (since MLB’s rules stipulate that a team would lose the DH spot under such circumstances). Starting him also eliminates any complications that would come with trying to find him time to warm up if his spot in the batting order arose the inning prior — something that would have made it potentially more difficult for him to be able to close out the game.
Ohtani has completed six innings in each of his three previous pitching appearances this postseason, with a 3.50 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 18 innings.
The Dodgers should have options behind Ohtani. Tyler Glasnow will likely be available after needing just three pitches to get the save in Friday’s wild finish. Blake Snell also said he would be available after his Game 5 start on Wednesday.
In the bullpen, Roki Sasaki figures to be at manager Dave Roberts’ disposal, as well, despite throwing 33 pitches in one-plus inning of work on Friday.
Roberts said everyone short of Game 6 starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto would be available.
There are plenty of people speculating how one of the most popular baby names for those born this year and in 2026 in the United States and Japan will be Shohei after what Shohei Ohtani accomplished in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, hitting three home runs and striking out 10 in the Dodgers’ clinching win over the Milwaukee Brewers.
What’s also clear is how much inspiration Ohtani is providing for high school baseball players who want to hit and pitch like him.
“It’s pretty crazy to do, especially as the leadoff hitter, to strike out three, then hit a home run. He doesn’t have time to regroup,” Huntington Beach junior pitcher/outfielder Jared Grindlinger said. “It’s definitely inspiring to know it’s possible to do both at the next level. I hope other kids become two-way players.”
Grindlinger might be the best two-way player in the Southland next spring. He throws fastballs in the 90s and has lots of power as one of the best players from the class of 2027. He said he has studied Ohtani’s experiences.
“He goes through struggles,” he said. “It’s not like he goes 20 for 20. It’s good to know you’re going to fail and bounce back and it’s going to be all right.”
Joshua Pearlstein, an All-City outfielder and pitcher at Cleveland, said he was in awe watching Ohtani’s performance on television.
“It’s inspiring to me,” he said. “I was in shock. It was pretty cool to see him do everything at the same time. I think the biggest challenge is working on both at practice. It’s a challenge but I’m up for that challenge.”
Pearlstein said he studied when Ohtani was in high school in Japan, how “he was putting in the work every day. It inspires me to work at home to achieve the same goals he has reached.”
Another two-way player is Birmingham sophomore pitcher/shortstop Carlos Acuna, a diehard Dodgers fan.
Sophomore pitcher Carlos Acuna of Birmingham is also a hitter.
(Craig Weston)
“It’s awesome,” Acuna said. “That’s who I want to be like as a pitcher and hitter.”
Coaches have to be careful with two-way players because you don’t want to place too much of a burden on them at practices, something that might lessen or affect one of their skills.
Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman told The Times: “When you’re getting older and older, you kind of veer toward one avenue. I do think you’re starting to see more at the college level and potentially letting guys [do both] because of Shohei , which is really cool because he’s changing the game. I don’t know if you’re going to see another person. Most people don’t see what Shohei is doing in between and underneath. He’s two different people and has to do it day in and day out.”
Grindlinger agrees practices are where a balancing act takes place.
“I get to do my pitching stuff first, then my hitting stuff afterward,” Grindlinger said. “Or my dad will throw to me afterward. You have to plan around it. Sometimes I can’t do heavy lifting because I have a bullpen day. It’s definitely a challenge but a fun one.”
No sooner had the Toronto Blue Jays clinched a World Series spot against the Dodgers than the torrent of memes, posts and tweets flowed, all with some version of this one-liner: Finally, Shohei Ohtani is on the plane to Toronto.
On a December day two years ago, as Ohtani navigated free agency: three reports surfaced: there was a private plane flying from Orange County to Toronto (true); Ohtani had decided to sign with the Blue Jays (false); and Ohtani was on a flight to Toronto (false).
When the jet landed, surrounded by reporters and photographers and even a news helicopter, an entire country fell into despair. The gentleman on the plane was not Ohtani.
He was Robert Herjavec, a star on “Shark Tank” and a prominent Canadian businessman with homes in Toronto and Southern California.
“It is my only claim to fame in the sports world: to be mistaken for someone else,” Herjavec said Tuesday.
Herjavec said he hopes to attend at least one World Series game in Los Angeles and another in Toronto. He is not the Dodgers’ $700-million man, but he said he would enjoy meeting Ohtani.
“I’m very disappointed,” Herjavec said with a laugh, “he hasn’t reached out to me for financial advice.”
He is no different than the rest of us, Ohtani’s teammates included. Watching Ohtani play calls to mind the words Jack Buck used to call Kirk Gibson’s home run: I don’t believe what I just saw.
“To me, as a layman and a couch athlete, the ability to throw a ball at 100 mph and then go out and hit three home runs?” Herjavec said. “It’s mind boggling.”
To be a successful businessman takes talent too, no?
“That’s the beauty of business,” he said. “I always say to people, business is the only sport where you can play at an elite level with no God-given talent.”
On that fateful Friday, Herjavec and his 5-year-old twins were en route to Toronto, and normally he would have known what was happening on the ground before he landed. However, he had turned off all the phones and tablets on board so he could play board games with his children in an effort to calm them.
“I gave them too much sugar,” he said. “They were wired.”
Upon landing, Canadian customs agents boarded the plane, in a hopeful search for Ohtani. Herjavec and his kids got off the plane, descending into a storm of national news because the Blue Jays are Canada’s team.
I asked Herjavec if he ever had disappointed so many people at any point in his life. He burst out laughing.
“That is such a great question,” he said. “That is my crowning achievement: I let down an entire nation at one time.”
The Blue Jays have a rich history. In 1992-93, they won back-to-back World Series championships, the feat the Dodgers are trying to duplicate.
The Jays have not appeared in the World Series since 1993, but that is not even close to the longest or most painful championship drought in Toronto.
The Maple Leafs, playing Canada’s national sport, have not won the Stanley Cup since 1967. That would be like the Dodgers or Yankees not winning the World Series since 1967.
“Speaking of letting people down,” Herjavec said.
The difference between Americans and Canadians, he said, is that Americans expect to win and Canadians believe it would be nice to win.
He counts himself in the latter camp. He can call both the Dodgers and Blue Jays a home team, but he is rooting for Toronto in this World Series.
“I have to,” he said, “because I’ve already disappointed the entire country once.
“I’m hoping, with my moral support, this will redeem me to Canadians.”
The film puts those moments on pause to share the long and complex relationship between the United States and Japan through the prism of baseball, and through the stories of four Japanese players — Ohtani included — and their journeys to the major leagues.
Baseball has been a national pastime in both nations for more than a century. A Japanese publishing magnate sponsored a 1934 barnstorming tour led by Babe Ruth. Under former owners Walter and Peter O’Malley, the Dodgers were at the forefront of tours to Japan and elsewhere.
In 1946, however, amid the aftermath of World War II, the United States government funded a tour by the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League. Director Yuriko Gamo Romer features archival footage from that tour prominently in her film.
“I thought it was remarkable,” she said, “that the U.S. government decided, ‘Oh, we should send a baseball team to Japan to help repair relations and for goodwill.’ ”
On the home front, Romer shows how Ruth barnstormed Central California in 1927, a decade and a half before the U.S. government forced citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps there. Teams and leagues sprouted within the camps, an arrangement described by one player as “baseball behind barbed wire.”
The film also relates how, even after World War II ended, Japanese Americans were often unwelcome in their old neighborhoods, and Japanese baseball leagues sprung up like the Negro Leagues.
In 1964, the San Francisco Giants made pitcher Masanori Murakami the first Japanese player in Major League Baseball, but he yielded to pressure to return to his homeland two years later.
San Francisco Giants pitcher Masanori Murakami, shown on the a pro baseball field in 1964, was the first Japanese athlete to play in Major League Baseball.
Now, star Japanese players regularly join the majors. In that 2023 WBC, as the film shows at its end, Ohtani left his first big imprint on the international game by striking out Trout to deliver victory to Japan over the United States.
On Friday, Ohtani powered the Dodgers into the World Series with perhaps the greatest game by any player in major league history.
In previous generations, author Robert Whiting says in the film, hardly any American could name a prominent Japanese figure, in baseball or otherwise. Today, Ohtani’s jersey is baseball’s best seller, and he is a cultural icon on and off the field, here and in Japan.
Fans cheer as Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani hits his third home run during Game 4 of the NLCS against the Milwaukee Brewers on Friday at Dodger Stadium.
It was one of those performances that will be spoken about for years.
Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani delivered a night for the ages in the Dodgers’ 5-1 win over the Milwaukee Brewers in the clinching fourth game of the National League Championship Series on Friday night.
After slumping throughout the postseason, the Japanese sensation hit three home runs and pitched six shutout innings with 10 strikeouts at Chavez Ravine to advance the Dodgers to the World Series.
Yes, the Dodgers are advancing to their second-straight World Series, where they’ll face either the Seattle Mariners or Toronto Blue Jays, beginning Friday.
They will attempt to become the first Major League Baseball team to win consecutive crowns since the New York Yankees’ threepeat from 1998 to 2000.
However, the night became a celebration of Ohtani, as documented by my sports colleagues.
Let’s take a look at some of what made Friday such a magical evening.
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Los Angeles, can you understand the singular greatness that plays here? Fall Classic, are you ready for another dose of Sho-time?
Ohtani and the Dodgers are back on baseball’s grandest stage, arguably the best player in baseball history concocting arguably the best single-game performance in postseason history.
The final score was 5-1, but, really, it was over at 1-0, Ohtani’s thunderous leadoff homer after his thundering three strikeouts igniting a dancing Dodger Stadium crowd and squelching the Brewers before the first inning was even 10 minutes old.
How far did that first home-run actually travel? Back, back, back into forever, it was the first leadoff homer by a pitcher in baseball history, regular season or postseason, a feat unmatched by even the legendary Babe Ruth.
The unicorn Ohtani basically created the same wizardry again in the fourth inning and added a third longball in the seventh in carrying the Dodgers to their second consecutive World Series and fifth in nine years while further cementing their status as one of baseball’s historic dynasties.
Ohtani took one of the best rounds of batting practice anyone in attendance had seen, getting into the real work of trying to fix a swing that had abandoned him for much of this postseason.
In 32 swings, Ohtani hit 14 home runs. Many of them were moonshots. One even clanged off the roof of the right-field pavilion.
Over his previous seven games, going back to the start of the NL Division Series, he had two hits in 25 at-bats.
He had recorded 12 strikeouts and plenty more puzzling swing decisions. And he seemed, at least in the estimation of some around the team, unusually perturbed as public criticisms of his play started to mount.
Then, two days later, a tour de force performance that will be talked about forever.
“He woke up this morning with people questioning him,” said Andrew Friedman, Dodgers president of baseball operations, during an alcohol-soaked celebration in the clubhouse afterward. “And 12 hours later, he’s standing on the podium as the NLCS MVP.”
Up next for the Dodgers is the World Series and perhaps some more Ohtani magic.
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Wow, what a week in sports. USC defeats Michigan, a Dodger pitches a complete game for the first time in the postseason since 2004 and they sweep the Brewers to go to the World Series for the second consecutive year after being 0-6 against Milwaukee during the regular season. Perhaps Michael Conforto will be added to the roster and win MVP in the World Series.
Jeff Hershow Woodland Hills
While basically sleepwalking through the first three games of the NLCS, Shohei Ohtani saves his best for last. He goes “Hollywood” and produces the single greatest performance in MLB history as the final curtain comes down on the Milwaukee Brewers and extends the Dodgers’ magical journey to repeat as World Series champions.
Stay tuned for the sequel!
Rick Solomon Lake Balboa
It’s a bird, it’s a plane … no, it’s superhuman Shohei! He pitches a shutout, strikes out 10, and hits three tape-measure home runs. Wow!
Marty Zweben Palos Verdes Estates
In the history of Major League Baseball, has there ever been a player like Shohei Ohtani? I don’t think so. Shohei is the best ever. Enough said.
Chris Sorce Fountain Valley
Now that the Dodgers have effortlessly powered their way back into the World Series, it’s quite obvious that $400 million actually does buy what it used to!
Jack Wolf Westwood
At last, the second coming of the Dodgers has happened. We’ve been waiting for it and hoping for it, and now it’s here. Great offense, great defense and superb pitching. Our new chant should be “all the way L.A., all the way.”
Cheryl Creek Anaheim
Statistically speaking, there is a case to be made in comparing the postseason accomplishments of Sandy Koufax and Blake Snell. From a historical perspective, there is no comparison.
Koufax is a legendary lifetime Dodger who pitched until he physically was no longer able to do so. Snell famously refused to take the ball in his last Giants start to save himself for a free agency money windfall.
Bill Waxman Simi Valley
Stop the presses! The world is still spinning on its axis! Holy Toledo, Dave Roberts finally figured out a starting pitcher’s arm doesn’t fall off after 100 pitches. Too bad he didn’t come to that revelation during Blake Snell’s Game 1 performance, but better late than never as the saying goes.
Hi and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. I don’t know why everyone is carrying on about Shohei Ohtani, after all, he did give up two hits and walked three batters.
—I was under the impression that David Corenswet was going to be the new Superman. Apparently, I was wrong.
—So, I’m sitting there watching as Ohtani hits three home runs, strikes out 10 and pitches six shutout innings and wondering what to write about it. There are no words.
—Every Dodgers fan, heck, every baseball fan should pause for a moment and make sure they realize just what an amazing athlete we are watching.
—And to do it all with such apparent grace and humility. All you can say is “Wow!”
—Not everyone in my family is as hardcore a baseball fan as I am, but they all realize what an amazing thing this is.
—Judging just by body language, it looked like the Brewers gave up sometime in the middle of Game 3.
—Brewers manager Pat Murphy spent most of the series telling the media how much the Dodgers spend and how great they are and that’s how the Brewers played, like they were just lucky to be on the same field.
—Dave Roberts is managing the bullpen beautifully, just like he did last season. Blake Treinen doesn’t have it in Game 4, then he gets Trienen out of there as soon as he can.
—Anthony Banda should be high on the trust tree right now. He looks very good out there.
—The Dodgers only had to use 18 players from their 26-man roster to beat the Brewers. Not appearing at all in the NLCS: Position players Hyeseong Kim, Miguel Rojas and Ben Rortvedt and pitchers Ben Casparius, Jack Dreyer, Clayton Kershaw, Emmet Sheehan and Justin Wrobleski. Justin Dean appeared in every game but never batted.
—Just to show it’s a team game, if you take away Ohtani’s three homers, the Dodgers still win Game 4.
—They gave the NLCS MVP award to Ohtani, but consider this: Seven different Dodgers drove in at least one run, six Dodgers scored at least one run, eight Dodgers drew at least one walk.
—The Dodgers had 14 extra-base hits in the series. The Brewers had 14 hits, period.
—Dodgers starting pitchers threw 28.2 innings, gave up only nine hits and seven walks while striking out 35 and had an ERA of 0.63.
—The bullpen threw 7.1 innings, gave up five hits and four walks while striking out six and had a 2.46 ERA.
—This is only the second time the Dodgers swept a best-of-seven series. The other time was in the 1963 World Series, whose starting pitchers were also dominant (they threw 35.1 of a possible 36 innings).
—Speaking of which, up next is the World Series. But we aren’t going to worry about that today, or this weekend. It starts next Friday against either Toronto or Seattle. And I’m telling you now, the Dodgers are going to win that series too.
—But in the meantime, enjoy the weekend. Series like this make it easy to remember that this is supposed to be fun.
Poll time
Which team would you like the Dodgers to play in the World Series, Seattle or Toronto?
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
From Bill Plaschke: One minute he was burning through the top of the first inning with three flaming strikeouts.
Roar!
The next minute — literally — he was slugging through the bottom of the first by driving a ball 446 feet into the back of the right-field pavilion.
Roar! Roar!
Three innings later he was doing it again, striking out two batters in the top of the fourth inning before driving a ball 469 feet over the roof of the same right field pavilion.
Roar! Roar! Roar!
Then in the seventh inning after he had left the mound after six scoreless, 10-strikeout innings, he hammered history again, driving a ball 427 feet over the center-field fence to complete a three-homer night.
Dodger fans, do you realize what you’re watching here? Los Angeles, can you understand the singular greatness that plays here? Fall Classic, are you ready for another dose of Sho-time?
Dodgers 2, at Milwaukee 1 (box score) Dodgers 5, at Milwaukee 1 (box score) at Dodgers 3, Milwaukee 1 (box score) at Dodgers 5, Milwaukee 1 (box score)
ALCS Seattle vs. Toronto Seattle 3, at Toronto 1 (box score) Seattle 10, at Toronto 3 (box score) Toronto 13, at Seattle 4 (box score) Toronto 8, at Seattle 2 (box score) at Seattle 6, Toronto 2 (box score) Sunday at Toronto, 5 p.m., FS1 *-Monday at Toronto, 5 p.m., Fox/FS1
When Tim Skipper first took over the team a month ago, he placed a new opponent on the schedule: the locker room. The interim coach showed players pictures of how it should look, including the lockers and the surrounding floor.
They scrubbed the place and it’s been spotless ever since. Sort of like the Bruins’ play starting with that Penn State game.
“I think a clean locker room makes you a lot happier,” Skipper explained this week. “It shows team discipline and it shows you can win off the field, so now you can go ahead and get on the field.”
“We have identified a style of play that we want to be, and it’s our job now to keep the standard the standard, you know, play with that fanatical effort, play with fundamentals, being smart, you know, all those things we just have to continue to do,” Skipper said. “But it’s not like something that’s just going to show up on Saturday. You have to practice about it. You have to work on it and not just talk about it.”
Can the Bruins keep it up after two consecutive victories? Here are five things to watch Saturday afternoon at the Rose Bowl when UCLA (2-4 overall, 2-1 Big Ten) faces Maryland (4-2, 1-2):
From Ryan Kartje: He was on the brink of the biggest moment of his football career last November when Jayden Maiava tried firing a back-shoulder pass to the sideline and disaster struck.
His third start at USC, to that point, had been his best, by far. While Notre Dame rolled over USC’s run defense, the young quarterback kept the Trojans afloat, passing for three scores and rushing for two more in a performance reminiscent of the one that, in 2022, secured Caleb Williams his Heisman Trophy.
But then came that sideline throw in the final minutes. The pass was picked off by the Irish and returned for a touchdown. A few minutes later, having led USC back into the red zone once again, Maiava threw a second, back-breaking pick-six.
Maiava knows he can’t afford to let that trend continue if USC has hopes of knocking off its rival on the road.
Here’s what else to watch as No. 20 USC travels to South Bend, Ind. to take No. 13 Notre Dame on Saturday night.
From Sam Farmer: When the Chargers are successful — and they have won four of six games this season — you can most often trace the results back to two elite components: the arm of Justin Herbert and the leg of Cameron Dicker.
The football world celebrates the former. Herbert has pinpoint precision, even when draped in defenders. But the latter, Dicker’s record-breaking reliability, has almost become an afterthought. He’s going to make his kicks.
Nearly 80% of NFL games were decided by one possession last season, underscoring the value of a kicker who can deliver three points time after time. For instance, Dicker tied a career high by kicking five field goals in the 29-27 win at the Dolphins, including the 33-yard clincher — and in his five seasons he has never missed a field goal of 40 yards or fewer.
From Gary Klein: Rams star receiver Puka Nacua will not play Sunday against the Jacksonville Jaguars because of an ankle injury he suffered in last Sunday’s victory over the Baltimore Ravens, coach Sean McVay told reporters Friday in Baltimore.
Nacua, who ranks among NFL leaders in catches and yards receiving, did not practice this week in Baltimore, where the Rams stayed before their scheduled departure to London on Friday.
The Rams (4-2) play the Jaguars (4-2) at Wembley Stadium.
Veteran receiver Davante Adams is expected to become quarterback Matthew Stafford’s primary target. Tutu Atwell, who sat out against the Ravens because of a hamstring injury, will return Sunday. Jordan Whittington also is expected to start.
From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: After slow-playing stars Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, rotating different lineups to accommodate an unreasonably busy six-game preseason schedule and giving their two-way players extended run, the Lakers buttoned up the rotation for a final preseason game Friday that coach JJ Redick called a “dress rehearsal.”
With the curtain finally lifting on Tuesday, the Lakers are not quite ready for showtime.
Doncic dazzled with 31 points, nine assists and five rebounds to lead five double-digit Lakers scorers, but the Kings came back for a 117-116 win at Crypto.com Arena. Despite playing without Keegan Murray, Domantas Sabonis, DeMar DeRozen or Malik Monk, the Kings still shot 54.7% from the field, led by 25 points on 10-of-17 shooting from former Laker Dennis Schroder.
Kings captain Anze Kopitar has a significant foot injury that could sideline him for the near future.
The Kings announced that Kopitar is “week to week” on Friday, a day after he missed the team’s 4-2 loss to Pittsburgh.
Kopitar was hit in the foot by a deflected puck during a shootout loss at Minnesota on Monday. After saying Kopitar’s availability would be a game-time decision for the game against Pittsburgh, the Kings acknowledged the injury could be more significant.
1912 — Black boxer Jack Johnson arrested for violating the Mann Act for “transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes” due to his relationship with white woman Lucille Cameron. Later convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to a year in prison.
1924 — Harold “Red” Grange accounts for six touchdowns in Illinois’ 39-14 win over Michigan. Grange returns the opening kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown. He follows with touchdown runs of 66, 55 and 40 yards in the first 12 minutes of the game. Grange later passes for another touchdown and returns another kick for a touchdown.
1953 — Woodley Lewis of the Los Angeles Rams has 120 yards in punt returns, including a 78-yard touchdown return, and 174 yards in kickoff returns in a 31-19 victory over the Detroit Lions.
1968 — Bob Beamon of the United States shatters the world record in the long jump at the Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Beamon’s leap of 29 feet and 2 1-2 inches betters the mark by one foot, 9 3-4 inches. The previous record, 27-4 3-4, was held by Soviet jumper Igor Ter-Ovanesyan and Ralph Boston.
1969 — Mike Adamle rushes for 316 yards as Northwestern beats Wisconsin 27-7.
1974 — Chicago center Nate Thurmond, in his first game with the Bulls, records the NBA’s first quadruple-double. Thurmon has 22 points, 14 rebounds, 13 assists and 12 blocks in the Bulls’ 120-115 overtime win over the Atlanta Hawks at Chicago Stadium.
1978 — Dave Gall becomes the first jockey to win eight races during a single program. He rides in 10 consecutive races for the day at Cahokia Downs in Alorton, Ill., finishing second and fifth in his two losing efforts.
1981 — Joe Danelo of the New York Giants kicks six field goals in a 32-0 victory over the Seattle Seahawks.
1992 — Miami and Washington are tied for No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 football poll. It’s the first tie at the top in 51 years and the third since the poll started in 1936.
1997 — Willamette’s Liz Heaston, a junior, becomes the first woman to play in a college football game when she kicks two extra points in a 27-0 win over Linfield College in the NAIA.
2002 — New Zealand’s Michael Campbell wins the longest match (43 holes) in World Match Play history in the morning, then defeats Ian Woosnam later in the day to reach the semifinals. Campbell’s 10-foot birdie putt at the seventh sudden-death hole beats Nick Faldo, the longest match in the event’s 39-year history by three holes.
2005 — Boston’s Brian Leetch becomes the seventh defenseman — and 69th player — in NHL history to reach 1,000 career points with a goal and an assist in the Bruins’ 4-3 loss to Montreal.
2009 — Tom Brady, Patriots, throws six touchdown passes — five in one quarter, an NFL mark, in a 59-0 win in the snow against Tennessee.
2013 — Grambling cancels its football game against Jackson State after Grambling’s disgruntled players refuse to travel to Jackson for the game on Oct. 19.
2015 — The Green Bay Packers stop San Diego on fourth-and-goal from the 3 with 15 seconds left and overcome a career day by Philip Rivers to hold off the Chargers 27-20. Rivers sets career highs with 43 completions, 65 attempts and 503 yards passing with two touchdowns.
2016 — Chicago Blackhawks forward Marian Hossa became the 44th NHL player to reach 500 career goals. The 37-year-old Hossa slid a power-play backhander through the legs of Philadelphia goaltender Michal Neuvirth at 5:04 of the second period, giving the Blackhawks a 4-0 lead. Chicago won 7-4.
Compiled by the Associated Press
THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY
1977 — Reggie Jackson hits three consecutive home runs, all on the first pitch, to lead the New York Yankees to the World Series championship over the Dodgers in six games.
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
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.
Shohei Ohtani has done next to nothing in the National League Championship Series. The Dodgers could sweep their way into the World Series on Friday, with Ohtani as a footnote in the NLCS story, but baseball’s best player has a flair for the dramatic.
Baseball’s contemporary two-way superstar can do something Friday that baseball’s original two-way superstar never did.
Ruth started three postseason games as a pitcher, never hitting a home run in those games. Ohtani starts his second postseason game as a pitcher Friday, looking for his first postseason home run as a pitcher.
He could hit a home run and be the winning pitcher Friday, because why not?
“I feel like Shohei is a superhero character,” Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas said.
In the division series, Ohtani had one hit in 18 at-bats, with nine strikeouts. After the Dodgers clinched, this was catcher Will Smith: “He didn’t do much this series. I expect next series for him to come out and hit like five homers. That’s just who he is.”
In this series, Ohtani has two hits in 11 at-bats, with five strikeouts. Over the NLDS and NLCS, he is batting .103 with no home runs, and he has struck out in 48% of his at-bats.
He has not hit five home runs in this series, as Smith had optimistically anticipated.
“I’m hoping he will tomorrow,” Smith said Thursday.
If a player has a rough week or two in June and changes up his routine, you might hear about it for a couple of minutes on the pregame show. Ohtani had a rough week or two in October and decided to take batting practice on the field instead of in the indoor cages Wednesday, and it became MAJOR BREAKING INTERNATIONAL NEWS.
Not just for fans, the ones that have made his jersey baseball’s best seller, and the ones set to flock to the grand opening of a Tokyo pop-up gallery Friday, featuring vinyl albums that pay homage to the walk-up songs and anthems of Ohtani and other major league stars.
Ohtani’s teammates came out to watch that rare outdoor batting practice. The sound guys cranked up an extra dose of Michael Bublé. And, because it was Ohtani, he hit a ball off the roof of the right-field pavilion.
So, no, the Dodgers aren’t worried. And, no, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts isn’t about to move Ohtani down in the lineup.
“Obviously, Shohei’s not performing the way he would like or we expect,” Roberts said. “But I just know how big of a part he is to this thing.
“We’ve got a long way to go. But I just like the work he’s putting in. And I’ll bet on him all day long.”
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani runs the bases on a leadoff triple against the Brewers in the first inning of Game 3 of the NLCS on Thursday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
For Ohtani’s hitting, pitching has been his kryptonite this season. In his 15 starts, including the one in the NLDS, he is batting .207, and he has struck out in 43% of his at-bats.
“I don’t necessarily think that the pitching has affected my hitting performance,” Ohtani said Wednesday. “Just on the pitching side, as long as I control what I can control, I feel pretty good about putting up results. On the hitting side, just the stance, the mechanics, that’s something that I do. It’s a constant work in progress.”
There was some progress Thursday, when Ohtani tripled to lead off the first inning. On the next pitch, Mookie Betts doubled him home.
“It’s kind of like the Bulls playing without Michael Jordan sometimes,” Betts told TBS after the game. “So we get him going and then it’s really going to be hard to beat. You see what happens immediately. As soon as he gets a hit, good things happen. But he’s going to be there.
“He’s going to be there when the time is right. We all trust and believe in Shohei.”
Before the NLCS, Roberts was blunt about Ohtani’s offensive struggles.
“We’re not gonna win the World Series with that sort of performance,” Roberts said.
That sort of performance has continued, and the Dodgers are undefeated since then. That makes it easier to believe in Ohtani, and in what he might deliver on Friday.
“I’m expecting nothing short of incredible,” infielder Max Muncy said.
“All in all, I’m expecting Shohei to pitch a great game, and whatever he does offensively is just kind of icing on the cake at that point. It’s a tough thing to pitch and hit in the same game, especially in a postseason game. He’s going to be fine.”
The Ruth comparison only goes so far. When he pitched in the postseason, he was primarily a pitcher, twice batting ninth. He made 145 pitches in his first postseason start, a 14-inning complete-game victory.
That is about all we can say Ohtani will not do. The Dodgers are so deep that, Roberts’ fear notwithstanding, they could win the World Series with a slumping Ohtani. They did that last year, in fact.
However, with one mighty swing, Friday’s storyline could be less about what he did not do and more about what Ruth could not do. Champagne showers are in the forecast.
From Jack Harris: At 5:37 p.m. Wednesday night, Michael Buble’s “Feeling Good” blared from the Dodger Stadium speakers.
Shohei Ohtani came strolling to the plate with a bat in his hands.
There was no one in the stands, of course. Nor an opposing pitcher on the mound. The Dodgers, on this workout day after returning from Milwaukee, were still some 22 hours away from resuming their National League Championship Series against the Brewers. For any other player, it would have been a routine affair.
Ohtani, however, is not just any other player.
And among the many things that make him unique, his habit of almost never taking batting practice on the field is one of the small but notable ones.
Which made his decision to do so Wednesday a telling development.
Over the last two weeks, Ohtani has been in a slump. Since the start of the NL Division Series, he is just two-for-25 with a whopping 12 strikeouts. He has been smothered by left-handed pitching. He has made poor swing decisions and failed to slug the ball.
From Steve Henson: Witness testimony began Wednesday with an accusation of negligent supervision in the high stakes trial against the Angels by the family of deceased pitcher Tyler Skaggs.
Tim Mead, an Angels employee of 40 years, was portrayed by the plaintiffs lawyer, Rusty Hardin, during four hours of direct examination as a well-meaning boss who repeatedly ignored company policy by failing to report the improper conduct of Eric Kay, the team communications director who gave Skaggs the fentanyl pills that killed him.
Hardin brought up a litany of instances where Kay likely violated Angels rules that could have resulted in discipline and even termination long before the July 2019 road trip to Texas during which Skaggs died in his hotel room after chopping up and snorting the illicit drugs provided by Kay.
Mead acknowledged that he knew of Kay’s years-long episodes of bizarre behavior, an extramarital affair with an intern, and problems with prescription medication, but that he never reported any of it to human resources.
Thursday: at Dodgers, 3 p.m., TBS, truTV, HBO Max, AM 570, KTMZ 1220, ESPN radio
Friday: at Dodgers, 5:30 p.m., TBS, truTV, HBO Max, AM 570, KTMZ 1220, ESPN radio
*-Saturday: at Dodgers, 5 p.m., TBS, truTV, HBO Max, AM 570, KTMZ 1220, ESPN radio
*-Monday: at Milwaukee, 2 p.m., TBS, truTV, HBO Max, AM 570, KTMZ 1220, ESPN radio
*-Tuesday: at Milwaukee, 5 p.m., TBS, truTV, HBO Max, AM 570, KTMZ 1220, ESPN radio
ALCS Seattle vs. Toronto Seattle 3, at Toronto 1 (box score) Seattle 10, at Toronto 3 (box score) Toronto 13, at Seattle 4 (box score) Thursday at Seattle, 5:30 p.m., FS1 Friday at Seattle, 3 p.m., FS1 *-Sunday at Toronto, 5 p.m., FS1 *-Monday at Toronto, 5 p.m., Fox/FS1
*-if necessary
LAKERS
From Broderick Turner: Gabe Vincent pulled up for a three-pointer and nailed it. And then Vincent nailed his next three and his next three and his next, giving him four straight made treys.
Vincent was on fire to start the game for the Lakers during their exhibition game against the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday night at T-Mobile Arena.
Before Vincent could even think about getting off his fifth three-pointer, Mavericks rookie Cooper Flagg smothered him. Vincent stumbled and fell, scrambling to keep control of the ball. He did and passed it to a teammate.
The Kings have reacquired veteran goalie Pheonix Copley to provide depth while Darcy Kuemper is slowed by a lower-body injury.
The Kings acquired the 33-year-old Copley from Tampa Bay in a trade Wednesday for future considerations.
Copley spent the previous three years in the Kings’ organization, including 42 games last season for the AHL’s Ontario Reign. The former Washington netminder started 35 games for the Kings during the 2022-23 season before missing most of the 2023-24 season because of a knee surgery.
1897 — Michigan beats Ohio State 34-0 at Ann Arbor, the first meeting between theses storied rivals.
1909 — In his 4th title defense Jack Johnson KOs Stanley Ketchel in the 12th round at Mission St Arena, Colma, California to retain his heavyweight boxing crown.
1932 — After a 0-0 tie earlier in the season, the Green Bay Packers beat the Chicago Bears 2-0.
1946 — Detroit’s Gordie Howe scores a goal and gets into two fights in his first NHL game. The Red Wings tie the Toronto Maple Leafs 3-3.
1964 — Babe Parilli of the Boston Patriots passes for 422 yards and four touchdowns in a 43-43 tie with the Oakland Raiders.
1968 — Americans Tommie Smith and John Carlos give black power salutes during the medal ceremonies of the 200-meter race and are later banned for life from all Olympic competition by the IOC.
1971 — Norm Ullman of the Toronto Maple Leafs records his 1,000th point in a 5-3 loss to the New York Rangers. Ullman gets two assists to become the fourth NHL player to reach the milestone.
1976 — Tony Franklin of Texas A&M kicks two field goals over 60 yards for an NCAA record. The distances are 65 and 64 yards as the Aggies beat Baylor 24-0.
1977 — The Denver Broncos intercept seven passes off Ken Stabler of the Oakland Raiders in a 30-7 victory.
1977 — The Minnesota Vikings beat the Chicago Bears 16-10 in overtime with the only successful fake field goal in NFL overtime.
1987 — Mike Tyson retains his undisputed heavyweight title with a seven-round knockout of Tyrell Biggs in Atlantic City, N.J.
1999 — Fourth-ranked Virginia Tech hangs a record-setting 62-0 loss on No. 16 Syracuse. It’s the worst shutout loss by a ranked team in the history of The Associated Press poll.
1999 — Mount Union beats Otterbein 44-20 for its 48th consecutive victory, surpassing Oklahoma’s 42-year-old all-division mark of 47 in a row.
2004 — 17-year-old Lionel Messi makes his league debut for FC Barcelona in a 1-0 win against cross-town rivals Espanyol.
2004 — Mount Union beats Marietta 57-0 for its 100th consecutive regular-season victory. The Purple Raiders’ last regular-season loss was on Oct. 15, 1994, at home against Baldwin-Wallace.
2011 — Danell Leyva becomes the first American man gymnast to win a gold medal at the World Championships since 2003. Leyva wins the parallel bars title to become the first gold medalist for the U.S. since Paul Hamm claimed the floor exercise and all-around titles in 2003.
2011 — Dan Wheldon, 33, dies in a fiery 15-car wreck at Las Vegas Motor Speedway when his car flew over another on Lap 13 and smashes into the wall just outside turn 2.
2017 — Louisville’s Athletic Assn. officially fires coach Rick Pitino nearly three weeks after the school acknowledged that its men’s basketball program is being investigated as part of a federal corruption probe. The association, which oversees Louisville’s sports programs and is composed of trustees, faculty, students and administrators, vote unanimously to oust the longtime Cardinals coach after a board meeting.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
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At 5:37 p.m. Wednesday, Michael Buble’s “Feeling Good” blared from the Dodger Stadium speakers.
Shohei Ohtani came strolling to the plate with a bat in his hands.
There was no one in the stands, of course. Nor an opposing pitcher on the mound. The Dodgers, on this workout day after returning from Milwaukee, were still some 22 hours away from resuming their National League Championship Series against the Brewers. For any other player, it would have been a routine affair.
Ohtani, however, is not just any player.
And among the many things that make him unique, his habit of almost never taking batting practice on the field is one of the small but notable ones.
Which made his decision to do so Wednesday a telling development.
Over the last two weeks, Ohtani has been in a slump. Since the start of the NL Division Series, he is just two-for-25 with a whopping 12 strikeouts. He has been smothered by left-handed pitching. He has made poor swing decisions and failed to slug the ball.
Last week, manager Dave Roberts went so far as to say the Dodgers were “not gonna win the World Series with that sort of performance” from their $700-million slugger.
Thus, out Ohtani came for batting practice on Wednesday in the most visible sign yet of his urgency for a turnaround.
“The other way to say it is that, if I hit, we will win,” Ohtani said in Japanese when asked about Roberts’ World Series quote earlier Wednesday afternoon. “I think he thinks that if I hit, we will win. I’d like to do my best to do that.”
In Roberts’ view, Ohtani has already started improving from his woeful NLDS, when he struck out nine times in 18 trips to the plate against a left-handed-heavy Philadelphia Phillies staff that, as president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman emphatically put it, had “the most impressive execution against a hitter I’ve ever seen.”
In Game 1 of the NLCS against the Brewers, Ohtani was 0-for-two but walked three times; twice intentionally but another on a more disciplined five-pitch at-bat to lead off the game against left-handed opener Aaron Ashby.
The following night, he went only one-for-five with three more strikeouts, giving him 15 this postseason, second-most in the playoffs. But he did have an RBI single, marking his first run driven in since Game 2 of the NLDS. He followed that with a steal, swiping his first bag of the playoffs. And earlier in the game, he scorched a lineout to right at 115.2 mph, the hardest he’d hit a ball since taking Cincinnati Reds pitcher Hunter Greene deep in the team’s postseason opener.
“The first two games in Milwaukee, his at-bats have been fantastic,” Roberts said Wednesday, before heading out to the field and watching Ohtani’s impromptu BP session.
“That’s what I’ve been looking for. That’s what I’m counting on,” he added, while noting the careful approach the Brewers have also taken with the soon-to-be four-time MVP. “You can only take what they give you. So for me, I think he’s in a good spot right now.”
Shohei Ohtani puts the ball in play in the third inning during Game 4 of the NLDS.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Ohtani’s overall numbers, of course, continue to suggest otherwise. His .147 postseason batting average is second-worst on the team, ahead of only Andy Pages. His seven-game drought without an extra-base hit is longer than any he endured in the regular season.
“The first thing I have to do is increase the level of my at-bats,” Ohtani said in Japanese. “Swing at strikes and not swing at balls.”
On Wednesday, Ohtani’s slump also led to questions about his role as a two-way player, and whether his return to pitching this season (and, this October, doing it for the first time in the playoffs) has contributed to his sudden struggles at the plate.
After all, on days Ohtani pitched this season, he hit .222 with four home runs but 21 strikeouts. On the days immediately following an outing, he batted .147 with two home runs and 10 strikeouts.
His current slump began with a hitless, four-strikeout dud in Game 1 of the NLDS, when he also made a six-inning, three-run start on the mound.
And in days since, Roberts has acknowledged some likely correlation between Ohtani’s two roles.
“[His offense] hasn’t been good when he’s pitched,” Roberts said following the NLDS. “We’ve got to think through this and come up with a better game plan.”
Ohtani, on the other hand, pushed back somewhat on that narrative during Wednesday’s workout, in which he also threw a bullpen session in preparation for his next start in Game 4 of the NLCS on Friday.
While it is “more physically strenuous” to handle both roles, he conceded, he countered that “I don’t know if there’s a direct correlation.”
“Physically,” he added, “I don’t feel like there’s a connection.”
Instead, Ohtani on Wednesday went about fixing his swing the way any other normal hitter would. He went out on the field for his rare session of batting practice. Of his 32 swings, he sent 14 over the fence, including one that clanked off the roof of the right-field pavilion.
“Certainly, there’s frustration,” Roberts said of how he’s seen Ohtani handle his uncharacteristic lack of performance.
But, he added, “that’s expected. I don’t mind it. I like the edge.”
“He’s obviously a very, very talented player, and we’re counting on him,” Roberts continued. “He’s just a great competitor. He’s very prepared. And there’s still a lot of baseball left.”
All the Dodgers needed to do was slot Snell in for Game 1 on Monday, making him an option to pitch again on four days’ rest in Game 5. Then, they could have Ohtani go in Game 2 on Tuesday, allowing him to pitch before Wednesday’s scheduled off-day (which has been the team’s preference for the two-way star) and be available for another start if the series returns to Milwaukee for Games 6 and 7.
On Sunday, however, manager Dave Roberts announced a different plan.
Snell will indeed go in Game 1, trying to build upon the 1.38 ERA he posted in his first two outings this postseason.
But instead of Ohtani in Game 2, it will be Yamamoto who gets the ball — pushing Ohtani’s next pitching appearance to sometime later this series, Roberts said.
“We just don’t know which day,” Roberts said of when Ohtani will get the ball. “But he’ll pitch at some point.”
That alignment came as a surprise, but also had benefits from the Dodgers’ perspective.
Unlike Ohtani, who has gotten at least six days off between every one of his pitching outings since the start of July, Yamamoto has routinely pitched on five days’ rest this season. By starting him in Game 2, he can stay on that same schedule to pitch a potential Game 6 — something the Dodgers would have been less comfortable having Ohtani do.
By pushing Ohtani back to at least Game 3, of course, the Dodgers will sacrifice their ability to get him two starts in this series. However, even if he pitches in one of the Dodgers’ home games later this week, Ohtani could come out of the bullpen in a potential Game 7 — the kind of relief opportunity the team had hinted at for weeks down the stretch this season.
Because Ohtani will make just one pitching start in the NLCS, Roberts said it’s not as imperative that it come before an off-day, either.
“You have two other guys that potentially can pitch on regular rest,” Roberts said. “So [it’s about] how do you get your best pitchers the most innings in a potential seven-game series?”
Outside of pitching considerations, however, there’s another reason delaying Ohtani’s next pitching outing could also make sense.
In the NLDS, Ohtani went one for 18 at the plate with nine strikeouts. He looked particularly out of sorts in Game 1, when he struck out four times in what was his first career playoff game both hitting and pitching.
Coming out of the series, Roberts emphasized the need for Ohtani to “recalibrate” at the plate, noting that the team was “not gonna win the World Series with that sort of performance” from its biggest star.
And while Roberts insisted on Sunday that Ohtani’s offensive slump had “no bearing” on the team shuffling its rotation, giving Ohtani two games at the start of the NLCS to focus soley on hitting certainly won’t hurt his efforts to straighten out his swing.
“I expect a different output from Shohei on the offensive side this series,” Roberts said.
For at the least the next couple days, that will be his only objective.
When Shohei Ohtani was asked about his woeful performance at the plate in the Dodgers’ National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies last week, he first gave credit to the opposition.
Then, after a series that saw the Phillies counter him with one left-handed pitcher after the next, he was also quick to point out that he wasn’t alone.
“It was pretty difficult for left-handed hitters,” Ohtani said in Japanese amid the Dodgers’ clubhouse celebration following their Game 4 victory. “This was also the case for Freddie [Freeman].”
The Phillies did indeed make life tough on the Dodgers’ best lefty bats.
Freeman was only three for 15 in the series, albeit with a key Game 2 double and a .294 on-base-percentage.
Max Muncy was four for nine in the series, but spent most of it waiting on the bench, not getting a start in any of the three contests the Phillies had a southpaw on the mound.
And as a team, the Dodgers hit just .199 with 41 strikeouts in the four-game series.
However, no one’s struggles were as pronounced as Ohtani’s — the soon-to-be four-time MVP winner, who in the NLDS looked like anything but.
Ohtani struck out in each of his first four at-bats in Game 1. He didn’t get his first hit until grounding an RBI single through the infield in the seventh inning of Game 2.
After that, Ohtani’s only other time reaching base safely was when the Phillies intentionally walked him in the seventh inning of Game 4.
His final stat line from the series: One for 18, nine strikeouts and a whole lot of questions about what went wrong.
Ohtani, who was coming off a three-hit, two-homer wild-card round, did acknowledge Thursday night that “there were at-bats that didn’t go the way I thought they would.”
But, he quickly added: “The opposing pitchers didn’t make many mistakes. They pitched wonderfully, in a way that’s worthy for the postseason. There were a lot of games like that for both teams.”
The real question coming out of the series was about the root cause of Ohtani’s unexpected struggles.
Was it simply because of the tough pitching matchups, having faced a lefty in 12 of his 20 trips to the plate? Or had his faltering approach created more legitimate concerns, the kind that could threaten to continue into the NL Championship Series?
“I think a lot of it actually was driven by the left-handed pitching,” manager Dave Roberts said Saturday, as the Dodgers awaited to face either the Chicago Cubs or Milwaukee Brewers in an NLCS that will begin on Monday.
“Hoping that he can do a little self-reflecting on that series, and how aggressive he was outside of the strike zone, passive in the zone,” Roberts said. “The at-bat quality needs to get better.”
For the Dodgers, the implications are stark.
“We’re not gonna win the World Series with that sort of performance,” Roberts continued. “So we’re counting on a recalibration, getting back into the strike zone.”
From the very first at-bat of Game 1 — when he was also the starting pitcher in his first career playoff game as a two-way player — Ohtani struggled to make the right swing decisions.
He chased three pitches off the inside of the plate from Phillies lefty Cristopher Sánchez, which Roberts felt “kinda set the tone” for his series-long struggles, then took a called third strike the next two times he faced him.
From there, the 31-year-old slugger could never seem to dial back into his approach.
He went down looking again in Game 1 against left-handed reliever Matt Strahm. He led off Game 2 with another strikeout against another lefty in Jesús Luzardo. On and on it went, with Ohtani continuing to chase inside junk, flailing at pitches that darted off the plate the other way, and finding his only reprieve in a rematch with Strahm in Game 2 when he got just enough on an inside sinker.
Roberts’ hope was that, moving forward, Ohtani would be able to learn and adjust.
“Understanding when he faces left-handed pitching, what they’re gonna try to do: Crowd him in, off, spin him away,” Roberts said. “He’s just gotta be better at managing the hitting zone. I’m counting on it. We’re all counting on it.”
Roberts also conceded that Ohtani’s at-bats on the day he pitched in Game 1 seemed to be especially rushed.
“[When] he’s pitching, he’s probably trying to conserve energy, not trying to get into at-bats,” Roberts said. “It hasn’t been good when he’s pitched. I do think that’s part of it. We’ve got to think through this and come up with a better game plan.”
After all, while Ohtani might not have been the only struggling hitter in the NLDS, his importance to the lineup is greater than anyone’s. The Dodgers can only endure without him for so long.
PHILADELPHIA — On the mound, he self-destructed in a second inning that nearly placed the game out of his team’s reach.
In the batter’s box, he struck out four times for only the seventh time in his career.
A two-way player for the first time in a postseason game, Shohei Ohtani didn’t save the Dodgers on Saturday night.
Instead, Ohtani was the one being saved in a 5-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 1 of their National League Division Series.
He was saved by Tyler Glasnow, Alex Vesia and Roki Sasaki, who combined to shut down the lethal Phillies lineup over the last three innings.
He was saved by a two-run double by Kike Hernández in the sixth inning that reduced their deficit to 3-2.
He was saved by a three-run blast by Teoscar Hernández in the seventh that moved them in front, 5-3.
Ohtani said in Japanese of Hernandez’s go-ahead homer: “It was a wonderful moment. I think it was the kind of moment that made you think, ‘This is the postseason.’”
The victory cleared a path for the Dodgers to defend a World Series title that once felt indefensible. By stealing the road win necessary to advance, the Dodgers have taken control of this best-of-five series against the Phillies, who could be the greatest obstacle in their World Series defense.
The Dodgers should have the edge in starting pitching over the next two games, as Blake Snell is scheduled to start Game 2 on Monday and Yoshinobu Yamamoto Game 3 on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium.
If a fifth game is required to decide this NLDS, Ohtani will be able to pitch on six-days’ rest.
Who could have imagined the Dodgers would be in this position after a game in which Ohtani staggered through a three-run second inning that left him looking as if he was eaten alive by the notoriously hostile Citizens Bank Park crowd?
“He’s not always going to be perfect,” Roberts said.
That being said, Roberts was quick to point out Ohtani’s contributions.
How after that brutal second inning, Ohtani pitched four scoreless innings to keep the Dodgers within striking distance. How Ohtani showed bunt and stepped out of the batter’s box in his ninth-inning at-bat as part of a plan to buy more time for Sasaki to warm up to close the game.
Ohtani sounded particularly proud of how he struck out NL home run king Kyle Schwarber for the third out of the fifth inning. The Phillies stranded two runners.
“I think it might have been a scene that decided the direction of the game,” Ohtani said.
The Dodgers scored two runs in the next innings and three in the inning after that.
“To kind of look at the at-bats that he took tonight and how he struggled offensively, but to separate that and just be a pitcher and weather that [second] inning and to go out there and give us six innings and keep us in the ballgame, I just don’t know any human that can manage those emotions,” Roberts said.
The comeback was necessary because of a second inning that started with a walk by Alec Bohm. Midway through the at-bat of the next hitter, Brandon Marsh, the Citizens Bank Park crowd started to taunt Ohtani.
Sho-hei!
Sho-hei!
Marsh singled. Ohtani responded by reaching back and throwing a 100.2-mph fastball over the heart of the plate to J.T. Realmuto, who launched a rocket into right-center field.
Heavy-footed right fielder Teoscar Hernandez failed to cut off the ball, which skipped to the outfield wall. Bohm and Marsh scored.
Realmuto reached third and scored two batters later on a sacrifice fly by Harrison Bader.
Just like that, the Dodgers were down, 3-0.
This was not the start envisioned by the Dodgers, who set up Ohtani to be the star of this series.
The Dodgers didn’t send Ohtani to the mound in either of their two games of the previous round against the Cincinnati Reds.
By starting Snell and Yamamoto in the wild-card series, the Dodgers were able to save Ohtani for Game 1 of their series against the more formidable Phillies.
The Dodgers entered the NLDS reveling in the history about to be made by Ohtani, the most valuable player as a designated hitter last season back in the October spotlight to pitch in the postseason for the first time.
“I think as he takes the mound for the bottom half [of the first inning], I’m going to take a moment just to appreciate him doing something unprecedented,” Roberts said before the game.
President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman went as far to make the case that Ohtani was underrated.
“I just don’t think the human brain can comprehend what he does and how difficult it is and how he is elite at both,” Friedman said. “The passion he has for hitting and the passion he has for pitching, it doesn’t seem like there’s enough passion to go around, but there is with him.”
Ohtani didn’t pitch last season as he was recovering from an elbow operation he underwent in 2023. Friedman recalled the diligence with which he rehabilitated.
“It wasn’t just about pitching for him,” Friedman said. “It was about pitching really well.”
Ohtani didn’t pitch really well on Saturday night, but he will have a chance to pitch really well in the days and weeks ahead.
PHILADELPHIA — The last time Shohei Ohtani took the mound against the Philadelphia Phillies, it was the first time all year he looked like a true starting pitcher again.
Ohtani, of course, had pitched plenty before that Sept. 16 game at Dodger Stadium, when he spun five no-hit innings against a Phillies team on the verge of a National League East division title. Up to that point, the two-way star had been making starts for the previous three months in his return from a second career Tommy John surgery.
During that stretch, however, Ohtani was under strict limitations. He pitched only one inning in his first two outings, two innings in the pair after that, and continued a slow, gradual build-up over the ensuing weeks. For many of those early starts, the right-hander didn’t even use his full arsenal of pitches, restricting himself to mostly fastballs and sweepers as he tried to hone in on his velocity and sharpen his rusty command.
That was in Ohtani in “rehab mode,” as the Dodgers described it.
The priority remained on protecting his surgically-repaired elbow.
But then came the meeting with the Phillies, in which Ohtani finally looked ready to turn the page.
He completed five innings for only the second all season. He did so with spectacularly dominant ease over just 68 pitches. He used his full mix, from a fastball that topped at 101.7 mph to a slider that induced a 50% whiff rate to a sinker/cutter/splitter combination that had the ball darting different directions to all quadrants of the plate. He collected five strikeouts and walked only one.
“He was phenomenal,” Phillies manager Rob Thompson recalled. “It was the combination of power, control, command, stuff.”
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Three weeks later, Ohtani is set to square off against the Phillies again, in Game 1 of the National League Division Series at Citizens Bank Park on Saturday night.
And this time, he won’t be subjected to the workload restrictions that forced him to make an early exit from that previous no-hit bid.
The plan, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Friday, is to “just treat him like a regular pitcher.”
“This is something we’ve been waiting for all year,” Roberts added, while opening the door for Ohtani to go as many as six or seven innings in what will be his MLB postseason pitching debut. “He’s ready for this moment. So, for me, I’m just going to sit back and watch closely.”
“I’m sure I’ll be nervous at times,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “But more than that, I’m just really grateful that I get to play baseball at this time of the year.”
If it hadn’t been for that September start against the Phillies, it’s unclear if Ohtani would be pitching with such freedom now.
That night, Roberts removed Ohtani from his no-hit bid because, as he put it after the game, he didn’t feel comfortable deviating from the the superstars prescripted pitching plan.
What Roberts did do in that game, however, was ask Ohtani how he felt after the fifth inning to gather information the Dodgers could use going forward. Ohtani told Roberts he still felt strong. Thus, in his final regular season start a week later in Arizona, the team allowed him for the first time to pitch into the sixth.
The Dodgers are still trying to be mindful of Ohtani’s two-way burden. He is starting Game 1 of this series (which will be followed by an off day Sunday) because they didn’t want to pitch him early in the wild-card round and then have to hit in subsequent days.
But going forward, president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, the club plans to use Ohtani like “a normal starting pitcher now.” No more pre-determined restrictions. No more overbearing health considerations.
“I’m very glad that I was able to end the rehab progression at that moment,” Ohtani said while reflecting back on the September start that signaled he was ready. “Just being healthy is really important to me, so I’m just grateful for that.”
Roster and rotation notes
Roberts said, after Ohtani, Blake Snell would likely start Game 2, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow lined up for Games 3 and 4. Glasnow will be available out of the bullpen for Game 1 as well.
Clayton Kershaw will be on the team’s NLDS roster, after being left off for the wild-card round. Roberts said he will pitch in a relief role out of the bullpen.
Catcher Will Smith is expected to once again be on the roster as one of three catcher, Roberts said, but his availability to start games remains in question. Though Smith’s right hand fractured has healed, he is still in the process of rebuilding strength and stamina after missing the last few weeks. He was scheduled to take live batting practice during the team’s Monday workout.
HONOLULU — Lawyers for a Hawaii real estate investor and broker who sued Shohei Ohtani and his agent denied any improper use of the Dodgers star’s likeness for a development project and alleged the agent was trying to deflect blame for cost overruns at the player’s home.
Ohtani and Nez Balelo of CAA Baseball were sued Aug. 8 in Hawaii Circuit Court for the First Circuit by developer Kevin J. Hayes Sr., real estate broker Tomoko Matsumoto, West Point Investment Corp. and Hapuna Estates Property Owners. They accused Ohtani and Balelo of “abuse of power” that allegedly resulted in tortious interference and unjust enrichment impacting a $240 million luxury housing development on the Big Island’s coveted Hapuna Coast.
Hayes and Matsumoto had been dropped from the development deal by Kingsbarn Realty Capital, the joint venture’s majority owner.
The amended complaint filed Tuesday added Creative Artists Agency and CAA Sports as defendants.
“Balelo and CAA sought to deflect blame by scapegoating Hayes for the cost overruns on Otani’s home — overruns caused entirely by defendants’ own decisions,” the complaint said.
“The allegations as we clarified them make very clear that there was never a breach of the endorsement agreement, the video that was posted on the website promoting specifically this project was sent to Balelo and CAA and another adviser to Ohtani, Mark Daulton, and they were aware of it and never objected to it,” said Josh Schiller, a lawyer for Hayes and the suing entities.
In a motion to dismiss filed Sept. 14, attorneys for Ohtani and Balelo said “plaintiffs exploited Ohtani’s name and photograph to drum up traffic to a website that marketed plaintiffs’ own side project development.”
“This is a desperate attempt to avoid dismissal of a frivolous complaint and, as we previously said, to distract from plaintiffs’ myriad of failures and their blatant misappropriation of Shohei Ohtani’s rights,” Laura Smolowe, a lawyer for Ohtani and Balelo, said in a statement. “Nez Balelo has always prioritized Mr. Ohtani’s best interests, including protecting his name, image, and likeness from unauthorized use.”
Lawyers for Hayes and the plaintiffs claimed they kept Balelo and CAA informed.
“Before the website went live, Hayes submitted a link to the entire site — including its promotional aspects — by email to Balelo and Terry Prince, the director of legal and business Affairs at CAA Sports LLC,” the amended complaint said. “It remained online with no material changes for 14 months before Balelo suddenly objected and threatened litigation — weaponizing the issue in order to create pretext for yet another set of demands and concessions.”
“The sudden demand that Kingsbarn terminate plaintiffs was instead a retaliatory measure against Hayes for resisting the constant and improper demands of Balelo and (Ohtani),” the complaint added. “Defendants further calculated that, with plaintiffs removed, they could more easily extract financial concessions from the project and enrich themselves at plaintiffs’ expense.”
PHOENIX — Shohei Ohtani entered uncharted territory in his final pitching start of the regular season, shutting out the Arizona Diamondbacks over a season-high six innings in the Dodgers’ 5-4 walk-off loss Tuesday night.
The question now, with the start of the playoffs looming: When will the two-way star toe the rubber next?
After a season spent mostly in rehab mode as a pitcher, building his workload inning by inning as he slowly worked his way back from a second Tommy John surgery, Ohtani has checked every box in his recovery and looks primed for what will be his first career postseason pitching outing.
On Tuesday, his fastball was elite once again, topping out at 101.2 mph and accounting for five of his eight total strikeouts. The rest of his seven-pitch mix kept the wild-card-seeking Diamondbacks off balance, resulting in just five hits (all singles) and no walks.
Most of all, the right-hander was also efficient, needing only 91 throws to work past the fifth inning for the first time this year.
“Over the last three or four starts, there’s been a ramp-up of intensity and performance,” manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani, who has given up one run in 19 ⅓ innings over his last four outings to finish the regular season with a 2.87 ERA in 15 starts.
“I think that was his plan.”
Now, it’s up to the team to make a plan for its postseason pitching rotation and figure out exactly where Ohtani fits within it.
Roberts has virtually guaranteed that the reigning National League MVP will be used as a starter in next week’s best-of-three wild card round (which the Dodgers are all but assured of playing in, even if they sew up an NL West division title that has a magic number of three.
And as things currently stand, Ohtani would be lined up to go in Game 1, after the team moved his weekly pitching schedule this month to have him start on Tuesdays. Coincidentally or not, Game 1 of the wild-card round would be next Tuesday.
The reasons for opening that series with Ohtani on the mound are obvious — from his electric stuff, to his penchant for performing in big moments, to ensuring he does pitch in a series that could end in only two games.
However, Roberts insisted team officials “don’t know yet” how their postseason rotation will be ordered. Between the ever-present concerns about managing Ohtani’s two-way workload, and the team’s other wealth of starting options in what has been a resurgent rotation over the last month, there’s debate to be had about how to best maximize their $700-million superstar.
The Dodgers could, for instance, opt to start the wild-card series with Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Games 1 and 2, and save Ohtani for a potential Game 3. The benefit there: Ohtani could focus solely on his duties as designated hitter the first two games, and wouldn’t be required to play the day immediately after a pitching start (he is hitting only .138 in such games this season, and the Dodgers have made an effort to get him starts immediately before off days in recent months).
Because Ohtani isn’t as built-up as the team’s other starters, delaying his start could also ease the burden early in the series on a shaky bullpen, which coughed up a 4-0 lead Tuesday after rookies Jack Dreyer and Edgardo Henriquez combined to surrender three runs in the seventh, and closer Tanner Scott blew his 10th save in a two-run ninth punctuated by Geraldo Perdomo’s walk-off single.
“I think it just kind of gives us some options,” Roberts said of having Ohtani potentially lined up for a Game 1 start. “But the likelihood of him starting a playoff game in that first series is very high.”
Whenever Ohtani takes the mound again, the Dodgers are hopeful that concerns about his pitching stamina will be somewhat assuaged.
Up until this week, the team had a hard cap of five innings for whenever Ohtani took the mound. For the sake of his health, they were reluctant to waver from it, even when Ohtani had a no-hitter through five his last time out against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Prior to Tuesday’s series-opener at Chase Field, however, Roberts said that “if all goes well,” Ohtani would pitch into the sixth inning and that his leash could be further loosened in October after recent conversations between the player and club.
“I feel really good with the conversation I had with Shohei about how today could potentially play out,” Roberts said pregame. “This is me talking to the training staff, talking to Shohei, feeling like we’ve got a really good base now.”
Once the sixth arrived Tuesday night, Ohtani made Roberts’ decision easy. He had yielded just three hits to that point (one of them, a comebacker that got him in the palm of his glove in the third). The Dodgers had a comfortable early lead, after Teoscar Hernández homered in the second and belted a two-run, two-out triple in the top of the sixth (catcher Ben Rortvedt added a run with his first Dodgers homer in the seventh).
Five batters later, Ohtani’s night was done, the right-hander stranding a pair of sixth-inning singles by getting Gabriel Moreno to line out to center and retire the side.
The next time he takes the mound, it will be his first time pitching in a postseason setting. Whether it comes in Game 1, or later in the best-of-three wild card series, will now be up for the team to decide.
Bullpen reinforcements
The Dodgers have at least one bullpen reinforcement coming in this series, with rookie right-hander Roki Sasaki set to be activated on Wednesday in his long-awaited return from a shoulder injury.
However, the status of trade deadline acquisition Brock Stewart remains in question. Though Stewart completed a recent minor-league rehab stint, and was with the team in Arizona on Tuesday, Roberts said the club is still “making sure he feels good” after missing the last six weeks with a shoulder injury. It is unclear if he will be activated this week, as originally expected.
“[We’re] making sure he’s put in a position to feel good if he is activated,” Roberts said. “That’s no guarantee … We’ll know more tomorrow.”
Before Tuesday’s game, Stewart threw an extended flat-ground session in front of a team trainer and general manager Brandon Gomes. The three talked for several minutes once Stewart’s session was complete.
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. This is a special bonus edition of the newsletter, because it is the one-year anniversary of something that should be remembered. Special note: I wrote most of the below newsletter Wednesday. On Thursday, Clayton Kershaw announced he is retiring at the end of the season.
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Kershaw is one of the greatest pitchers in baseball history, not just Dodger history. He is a first ballot Hall of Famer. We have had a tendency to focus on his shortcomings the last couple of seasons and sometimes let it overshadow the fact he is one of the greatest Dodgers ever. It’s unlikely we will ever see such a great player spend 18 seasons in a Dodger uniform again.
I have other duties here at The Times that make it difficult to write the kind of newsletter tribute Kershaw deserves and have it ready for you to read early Friday morning. So I’m not going to try and I ask for you grace and patience on that. We will have coverage throughout the weekend from our great Dodgers beat writer Jack Harris, and from our columnists such as Bill Plaschke. So I invite you to visit latimes.com/sports this weekend to read what they have to say. We will have a full newsletter devoted to Kershaw next week.
In the meantime…. Kershaw is scheduled to start tonight against the Giants. It will be his final regular-season start at Dodger Stadium. Depending on how the postseason goes, it could be his final Dodger Stadium start ever. He deserves a lengthy standing ovation when he takes the mound. And, hopefully all goes well and he can be removed during the game after a nice start, and get a lengthy standing ovation as he walks off the mound. Dodgers fans won’t see a pitcher like him again.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled bonus newsletter.
Ohtani or Schwarber?
One year ago today, Shohei Ohtani created the 50-50 club. While having perhaps the greatest day on offense (Ohtani was six for six with two doubles, three homers, four runs, two stolen bases and 10 RBIs) in major league history, Ohtani stole his 50th base in the first inning (after doubling to lead off the game). Then after singling, doubling again and homering, he came up in the seventh inning against Miami’s Mike Baumann and hit his 50th home run of the season. You can watch each of his at-bats from that game by clicking here.
It was the first time in the majors anyone had hit 50 homers and stolen 50 bases in the same season. Ohtani had never hit 50 homers (his high was 46 with the Angels in 2021) or stolen 50 bases (26 in 2021). It was part of a magical season that ended with a World Series title.
This season hasn’t been as magical, but Ohtani is having another outstanding season. As good as last season? On offense, no. But any team in the majors would take Ohtani’s offense this season. Ohtani leads the league in runs scored, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, OPS+, plate appearances, total bases and intentional walks. Let’s compare the two years:
Plate appearances 2024: 731 2025: 691
Batting average 2024: .310 2025: .283
On-base % 2024: .390 2025: .395
Slugging % 2024: .646 2025: .617
Runs scored 2024: 134 2025: 138
Doubles 2024: 38 2025: 24
Triples 2024: 7 2025: 8
Home runs 2024: 54 2025: 51
RBIs 2024: 130 2025: 95
Walks 2024: 81 2025: 105
Strikeouts 2024: 162 2025: 175
Stolen bases 2024: 59 2025: 19
OPS+ 2024: 187 2025: 179
WAR 2024: 9.2 2025: 6.7
Stolen bases are down, because pitchers have to protect their legs. But it’s another great season from Ohtani.
And the above doesn’t include the fact that on the mound he is 1-1 with a 3.29 ERA, giving up 35 hits and walking nine in 41 innings while striking out 54. By the way, no one has struck out 50 batters and hit 50 homers in a season until Ohtani this year. Another 50-50 club he has created.
The question is not “Is Shohei Ohtani having a disappointing season?” It’s “Should Ohtani win his third consecutive MVP award? His main competition is Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber. Let’s compare the two:
Plate appearances Ohtani: 691 Schwarber: 684
Batting average Ohtani: .283 Schwarber: .243
On-base % Ohtani: .395 Schwarber: .370
Slugging % Ohtani: .617 Schwarber: .567
Runs scored Ohtani: 138 Schwarber: 106
Doubles Ohtani: 24 Schwarber: 21
Triples Ohtani: 8 Schwarber: 2
Home runs Schwarber: 53 Ohtani: 51
RBIs Schwarber: 128 Ohtani: 95
Walks Ohtani: 105 Schwarber: 104
Strikeouts Schwarber: 181 Ohtani: 175
Stolen bases Ohtani: 19 Schwarber: 10
OPS+ Ohtani: 179 Schwarber: 152
WAR Ohtani: 6.7 Schwarber: 4.8
On the mound, Schwarber has … not pitched. Schwarber is a DH, so he doesn’t get bonus points for his defense.
The four favorites according to Vegas are Ohtani, Schwarber, New York’s Juan Soto and Chicago’s Pete Crow-Armstrong. I would include Arizona’s Geraldo Perdomo in that list, since he leads the NL in WAR and is having a very good season.
The only way Ohtani doesn’t win is if voters decide not to give it to the best player on a disappointing team and instead give it to Schwarber, who is having his best season on a strong Phillies team. Stats don’t always decide it. In 1988, a handful of players had better stats than Kirk Gibson, but Gibson was the most valuable player.
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. Don Stanhouse would have been a perfect fit for this bullpen.
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The big news this week (besides the continuing collapse of the bullpen, which barely qualifies as news anymore): Shohei Ohtani removed after five innings while pitching a no-hitter. He was replaced by Justin Wrobleski to start the sixth with the Dodgers leading the Phillies 4-0. Wrobleski had not given up a run this month. He gave up five in the sixth inning. Whoops.
This was followed by fans on social media and a certain newsletter writer’s inbox to complain about Dave Roberts, how he doesn’t know how to handle a bullpen and how he needs to be fired for general incompetence. The fired part is silly, so we will ignore that. But did Roberts mishandle the situation?
If you were mad about it, ask yourself this: Would you have been mad if the Dodgers had won 6-0, or 6-2? If not, you aren’t mad that he caused Ohtani to miss out on a no-hitter, you are mad the Dodgers lost. Let’s reexamine the situation.
—Ohtani is coming off of his second Tommy John surgery and the Dodgers have been very careful with him. A couple of weeks ago, they decided, in consultation with Ohtani, that he would not pitch more than five innings the rest of the season.
—Roberts: “He’s two players in one. If something happens, then we lose two players. … We haven’t done it all year. So, I’m not gonna do it tonight.”
—Roberts had Wrobleski ready, and Wrobleski has been his best reliever this month. Who else was he supposed to bring in?
—Even if Roberts had let Ohtani pitch the sixth, there is no way he would have been left in for nine innings to complete a no-hitter. And we don’t know how the cards would have played out if Wrobleski had started the seventh inning instead of the sixth.
—The Dodgers fought back to tie the score, until Blake Treinen gave up a three-run homer in the top of the ninth. The same Treinen who was a stud in last year’s postseason.
—The culprit, as it has been all season, was the bullpen, not Roberts. Please tell me what reliable reliever should have pitched. Wrobleski was the most reliable guy on that day, and he failed. Roberts can’t throw the pitches for them.
—When Roberts calls down to the bullpen, he must be thinking, “How should we die today? Should I choose slow poison? Electric shock?” There are no great options. The bullpen is the problem. You could have the greatest manager in major league history, and it won’t matter if everyone in his bullpen is as unreliable as the Dodger bullpen is at this moment.
So, it’s hard to see what Roberts did wrong here. The anger some have at him is misplaced on this occasion.
Roberts’ biggest weakness has always been his handling of the bullpen, no question about it. But this one wasn’t on him.
A trend?
This isn’t the first time Roberts has removed a pitcher who had a no-hitter going into the fifth inning or beyond. A look (click on the result line to be taken to a box score of the game):
April 8, 2016: Ross Stripling, 7 1/3 no-hit innings against San Francisco in his major league debut
Number of pitches: 100
Stripling was coming off elbow surgery and had walked his fourth batter of the game when, with one out in the eighth, Roberts removed him. Reliever Chris Hatcher gave up a two-run homer to the next batter.
Roberts quote: “I wanted to see him throw a no-hitter. It’s a special moment. But we’re looking at the long term. We’re looking at the long view. Ross can help us win many more games. If it would have gone south and something would have happened, I would have never been able to live with myself. Because this is this kid’s livelihood. That’s my job.”
Stripling quote: “I have no ill feelings toward the decision one bit. I’m thinking that’s just the right choice.”
Sept. 10, 2016: Rich Hill, seven perfect innings against Miami.
Number of pitches: 89
Wary of exacerbating the blisters that were forming on Hill’s left hand, Roberts removed him after seven perfect innings. Reliever Joe Blanton gives up a hit with two out in the eighth. Blanton, Grant Dayton and Kenley Jansen finish off the shutout.
Roberts quote: “I’m very, very sensitive to his personal achievements. I really am. But nothing should get in the way, or compromise, our team goal…. I’m going to lose sleep tonight. And I probably should.”
Hill quote: “I get it. I’m very adamant about living in the moment. I did not want to come out of the game.” (Note: Hill was shown slamming a bat into the dugout bench after being told he was coming out). “But I think there’s a bigger picture here, and we all know what it is.”
May 4, 2018: Walker Buehler, six no-hit innings against San Diego
Number of pitches: 93
Buehler had thrown 93 pitches, one shy of his professional high, and was operating under an innings restriction because of Tommy John surgery. Tony Cingrani, Yimi Garcia and Adam Liberatore finished off the no-hitter.
Roberts quote: “He was totally complicit. Just understood where I was coming from, understood where the organization was coming from, what impact he has, how important he is for the organization this year, and going forward.”
Buehler quote: “Obviously, I wanted to keep going. But obviously, it’s above my pay grade. They made the choice. And for these guys to finish it out, it’s pretty cool…. It was the toughest conversation I’ve ever had.”
April 13, 2022: Clayton Kershaw, seven perfect innings against Minnesota
Number of pitches: 80
Coming off an elbow injury the previous season, and with a lockout shortened spring training, Kershaw was on an 80-pitch limit. Alex Vesia gave up a hit with one out in the eighth. Vesia and Justin Bruihl finished off the shutout.
Roberts quote: “There’s a lot of people that are cheering for the Dodgers, not only just for today and Clayton to throw a no-hitter, but for the Dodgers to win the World Series. For us to do that, we need him healthy.”
Kershaw quote: “I knew going in that my pitch count wasn’t going to be 100, let alone 90 or whatever. So I don’t know. It’s a hard thing to do to have to come out of the game when you’re doing that. But we’re here to win and this was the right choice.”
Sept. 16, 2022: Dustin May, five no-hit innings against San Francisco
Number of pitches: 69
May had some arm soreness after his previous start, prompting the team to push back his outing a few days and limit his pitch count. Vesia gave up a hit with two out in the sixth. Vesia, Caleb Ferguson and Phil Bickford finished the shutout.
Roberts quote: “Getting him out of the game, feeling good, is the win. Considering how he threw the baseball the last couple times, building off tonight and [knowing he’s] going on regular rest his next turn, it was the smart decision.”
May quote: “I didn’t even realize I had a no-hitter going.”
June 16, 2023: Emmet Sheehan, six no-hit innings against San Francisco in his major league debut
Number of pitches: 89
Sheehan had been rushed up from double-A to make the start because of injuries. He was averaging fewer than five innings a start in the minors and had never pitched in more than six innings in a game in the minors. He was replaced by Brusdar Graterol, who gave up two runs, then Victor González gave up three runs and Vesia two runs in the loss.
Roberts quote: “I was actually contemplating it after five innings, given the usage he’s had. But where the state of the ‘pen has been, I was trying to squeeze another inning. So to get him through the sixth, I thought was huge.”
Sheehan quote: “To have the Dodger fans and my family behind me, I couldn’t have asked for a better debut. Besides a Dodger win.”
Sept. 21, 2023: Emmet Sheehan, 4 2/3 hitless innings against San Francisco
Number of pitches: 93
It was a tough outing, as Sheehan walked four, hit a batter and gave up a run on a bases-loaded walk. Vesia replaced Sheehan in the fifth, and the first hit was a home run by Joc Pederson off Vesia with one out in the sixth. Shelby Miller, Ryan Brasier, Joe Kelly and Evan Phillips finished off the victory.
Roberts quote: “I think when he got to that fifth inning, there was a little bit of running low on the fuel in the tank, some close misses. … But he pitched a heck of a ballgame.”
Sheehan quote: “I think I definitely build confidence every start.”
Sept. 8, 2025: Tyler Glasnow, seven no-hit innings against Colorado
Number of pitches: 103
Glasnow was pitching for the first time in 10 days because of a sore back. He gave up a run in the second inning on a walk, stolen base, a deep fly ball advancing the runner to third, and a sacrifice fly. He stuck out 11. Blake Treinen pitched a perfect eighth. Tanner Scott gave up a leadoff double in the ninth before getting the save.
Roberts quote: “I do think that there’s certain times, if [the starters] give me the opportunity as far as efficiency and how their stuff is playing, to push them a little more.”
Glasnow quote: “My pitch count was pretty high. I don’t know how many pitches I was going to be allowed to throw. Obviously I want to stay in, no matter what my pitch count is, but given my, like, track record, I kind of understand why. I respect the decision.”
Sept. 16, 2025: Shohei Ohtani, five no-hit innings against Philadelphia
Number of pitches: 68
Ohtani was limited to five innings because he had his second Tommy John surgery in 2023. He was relieved by Justin Wrobleski, who gave up five runs in the sixth, and Edgardo Henriquez, who gave up a run in the sixth. After scoreless innings by Jack Dreyer and Anthony Banda, Blake Treinen gave up three runs in the ninth.
Roberts quote: “We’ve been very steadfast in every situation as far as innings for [Ohtani’s] usage — from one inning to two innings to three to four to five. We haven’t deviated from that. He wasn’t going to go back out.”
Ohtani quote: “The decision of whether to take me out is something I leave completely to the manager.”
The postseason
Here’s how the postseason race pans out after Wednesday’s games:
Wild-cards 4. Chicago, 88-64 5. San Diego, 83-69 6. New York, 78-74
7. Arizona, 77-76 8. San Francisco, 76-76 9. Cincinnati, 76-76
The Phillies have clinched the AL East title. The Brewers and Cubs have clinched a playoff spot. Washington, Pittsburgh amd Colorado have been eliminated from playoff contention.
AL 1. Toronto, 89-63 2. Detroit, 85-67 3. Houston, 84-69
Wild-cards 4. New York, 85-67 5. Seattle, 83-69 6. Boston, 83-69
7. Cleveland, 80-71 8. Texas, 79-74 9. Kansas City, 76-76
Baltimore, Minnesota, Chicago, the Athletics and the Angels have been eliminated from playoff contention.
The top two teams in each league get a first-round bye. The other four teams in each league play in the best-of-three wild-card round, with No. 3 hosting all three games against No. 6, and No. 4 hosting all three against No. 5.
The division winners are guaranteed to get the top three seeds, even if a wild-card team has a better record.
In the best-of-five second round, No. 1 hosts the No. 4-5 winner and No. 2 hosts the No. 3-6 winner. That way the No. 1 seed is guaranteed not to play a divisional winner until the LCS.
Up next
Thursday: San Francisco (Logan Webb, 14-10, 3.34 ERA) at Dodgers (Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 11-8, 2.66 ERA), 7:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Friday: San Francisco (*Robbie Ray, 11-7, 3.50 ERA) at Dodgers (*Clayton Kershaw, 10-2, 3.53 ERA), 7:10 p.m., Apple TV+, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Saturday: San Francisco (Kai-Wei Teng, 2-4, 6.41 ERA) at Dodgers (Tyler Glasnow, 3-3, 3.06 ERA), 6:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Sunday: San Francisco (TBD) at Dodgers (Emmet Sheehan, 6-3, 3.17 ERA), 1:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Nineteen years ago today, the Dodgers hit four home runs in the bottom of the ninth to tie San Diego, win it on Nomar Garciaparra‘s home run in the 10th. Watch and listen here.
Until next time…
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