Shohei Ohtani just told the entire National League he is walking into October broken and planning to stay that way.
“As of now, it’s something I’m just going to have to manage,” Ohtani said Friday through an interpreter, naming the left knee and right biceps that already cost him most of September. He still cannot identify the root cause. That process waits until the offseason. Game 1 against the Braves is Saturday.
Dave Roberts tried to shrink it. “Shohei’s not 100%, but he’s going to be in the lineup,” the manager said. Then the real shrug: most players performing right now are not 100 percent either, and they just manage it. With Ohtani it is a bigger deal because of who he is, Roberts added, before sliding right back into the same language. That is the corporate soft-serve version of reality. It is also the one that gets teams eliminated.
Roberts Just Normalized a Superstar Who Cannot Pitch or Identify the Pain
Ohtani finished the year at .275/.377/.512 with 30 home runs and 11 steals. He went 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA in 14 starts. Those numbers still make him the runner-up for NL MVP behind Pete Crow-Armstrong. They also hide the actual product the Dodgers are rolling out in October.
He last pitched July 3. The knee issues that required a lubricant injection around the All-Star break ended the two-way season for good. Biceps inflammation and neck soreness then wrecked the bat. A 14-game stretch of seven hits and 22 strikeouts dumped him on the injured list. He returned for the final five regular-season games and went 5-for-21 with eight strikeouts. One late stretch ran 11-for-70 with zero home runs. That is the version of Ohtani the Braves get to face after a first-round bye the Dodgers earned by going 100-62.
Aaron Bates, the hitting coach, said recent batting practice was “as good as we’ve seen it this year as far as the way the ball was coming off.” Ohtani even smoked a couple off the scoreboard. Encouraging. It is also batting practice. The same swing still needed “little tweaks here and there” before Game 1, per Ohtani himself. He used the IL stint to focus purely on hitting and try new things because he already knew the pitching side was dead for the year. That honesty is useful. Treating the lingering damage like every other veteran’s September ding is not.
The Bye Helped the Swing. It Did Not Fix the Hardware
Ohtani took on-field BP, faced Yamamoto in a sim game, and got a couple live looks against Emmet Sheehan on Friday. One strikeout, one line drive to right. He says the body feels good overall and the swing is smoother. He wants the postseason atmosphere so he can recalibrate. All of that tracks for a competitor who still produces while compromised. An opposite-field double off Mason Miller’s 103 mph heater after the IL return proved the talent is still in there.
Talent is not the question. Durability under October innings is. The Dodgers are chasing a third straight World Series with their best player already conceding the injuries will not resolve. Freddie Freeman is also dinged. Roberts is correct that half the roster is managing something. He is wrong that Ohtani’s version belongs in the same sentence. When the root cause is still a mystery in early October, “manage it” becomes the entire October plan. That is a gamble dressed up as professionalism.
The late-season tape already showed the cost: overanxious swings, strikeouts stacking up, production collapsing once the calendar tightened. Roberts admitted they had not seen enough of the good version lately to forecast it with confidence, even while saying he expects good things once the lights turn on. Hope is not a scouting report.
Atlanta does not need Ohtani to look like the two-way monster from June. They need him to look like the guy who struck out eight times in five games and could not stay on the field in September. The Dodgers’ entire three-peat machine still runs through that bat in the middle of the order. Every other edge they built during a 100-win season gets smaller if the designated hitter is negotiating with his own knee and biceps for six weeks.
Ohtani will be in the lineup. He will manage it. The numbers from the last month already told everyone what that management looks like when the margin disappears. The Braves open at Dodger Stadium knowing exactly which version they are hunting.
