The Dodgers never waver in their game plan for the regular season: win enough games to earn a first-round bye in the playoffs and, in doing so, give players all the downtime they need during the summer to be in top shape in the fall. They don’t need to rush anyone off the injured list so they can win another National League West title.
Unfortunately for the Dodgers and their increasingly perilous hope of a three-peat, they didn’t follow that game plan with Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers failed with Ohtani this summer, and now all they have to do is cross their fingers collectively and hope for the best.
Hope, as they say, is not a strategy.
The Dodgers are expected to remove Ohtani from the postseason roster.
They won’t. They won’t even take him out of Wednesday’s lineup.
Amid headlines about how the Dodgers could have benched Ohtani for Game 3 of the National League Championship Series, manager Dave Roberts said the idea was more to couple Tuesday’s off day with a second straight day off.
“There was never any benching,” Roberts said.
Roberts drew a parallel between what could have happened with Ohtani and what happened with Freddie Freeman during the NLCS two years ago, when the Dodgers provided what the manager called a “reset” — a day off for the team, followed by a day off for Freeman.
“And he ends up winning the World Series MVP,” Roberts said.
Freeman had been playing with a sore ankle for three weeks, and even then he had been more productive in October than Ohtani was in this one. Ohtani has been playing with a sore knee and biceps for three months, and the Dodgers have already tried intermittent rest.
They tried this in September, twice. They touted their time off a week before the start of the playoffs. They talked about their three days off before the start of the NLCS.
They went 0 for 4. Enough already.
Roberts said the Dodgers — not just Ohtani, but the coaching staff and training staff — are seeing progress. It’s true, without a doubt. But we heard equally encouraging words after each of Ohtani’s breaks.
“We listen to Shohei, and we’re going to support him and believe in him,” Roberts said, “and that’s it.”
Ohtani said Tuesday that his symptoms have diminished since the Dodgers placed him on the minimum injured list. It was a month ago.
Shohei Ohtani is just three for 20 in the playoffs.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
On Tuesday, he said his approaches could alternate between “focusing on reducing symptoms and eliminating pain and/or just making sure I’m moving well in the swing.”
There is no evidence so far that it might work, and a growing body of uncomfortable evidence shows that it might not work.
Ohtani is hitting .150 in the postseason, with three hits in 20 at-bats. Of the 39 players with at least 20 postseason at-bats entering play Tuesday, only three have an OPS lower than Ohtani’s .411.
One of them, Dodgers catcher Will Smith, had one hit in 23 at-bats. But he hits the ball hard: In the NLCS, one ball hit 102 mph, another hit 101, and each ball hit harder than the one Ohtani hit hardest.
That exit velocity: 86 mph.
He did not strike out in the series for a hit or an out.
During his major league career, he hit a home run every 14 at-bats.
He hasn’t homered since August 18, a span of 107 at-bats. Since then, he has only completed one run; the Dodgers beat him to cleanup in Game 2.
And, since hitting that last home run, Ohtani is hitting .036 against fastballs thrown 95 mph or faster. The average postseason fastball: 96.2 mph, according to analyst Mike Petriello’s close-up of all the different ways Ohtani’s swing is fouled.
Break balls? Brewers reliever JoJo Romero threw a low blow to him in Game 2, and Ohtani lost his bat as he rushed to make contact.
When Ohtani spoke to reporters before the start of the playoffs, he said he might not know the extent of his injuries or what he might need to do to rehabilitate them until after the playoffs.
“I haven’t been able to fully understand the root cause of all this,” he said then. “I think that process is going to happen in the offseason, when I have a little more time to be able to fix it. But for now, it’s something I’m going to have to deal with.”
The Dodgers didn’t need Ohtani to win the NL West. They had to shut it down for an extended period of time to maximize their chances of winning in October.
They didn’t succeed. They figured a few days off would allow them to nurse Ohtani through the rest of the season.
A big change in October, and who cares? Ask Kirk Gibson, who limped to hit and then hit one of the most spectacular home runs in World Series history.
Here’s what the Dodgers should keep in mind: This was the only at-bat Gibson won in the 1988 World Series.
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