Dodgers: Ohtani’s arm urges, but his bat will serve … for now
The state of Dodgers launches, full of injury, is alarming. But Ohtani is too valuable to hurry to return to the mound.
The wear that has affected Los Angeles Dodgers was more evident on Tuesday night, when Matt Sauer, a 26 -year -old veteran, was called to launch mass tickets and ended up launching 111 throws, a personal record and at least 29 more than he had accumulated in the last two years. He was followed by Enrique Hernandez, the effervescent Utility player of the team, who achieved the last seven outs of an overwhelming defeat against the San Diego Padres launching cut straight lines that barely reached 80 km/h, marking the first time in at least 67 years that a Dodgers position player had been called to launch more than two entries.
Such is the state of the Dodgers launch body. Its injury rate is alarming once again, the team’s advantage in the division has become tiny due to this and the anticipation of Shohei Ohtani’s return to pitching continues to intensify. Ohtani participated in his third game simulated hours before the Dodgers displayed the lower part of their squad against its largest rivals, increasing the workforce to 44 pitches. His first opening since August 23, 2023 could be just one month. But the Dodgers promise to be cautious, no matter how short personnel they can be. Ohtani’s bat is too valuable. His future in both directions is too precarious.
“Seeing it in the short term, it is easy to want to be aggressive and press, I think that both for its part and ours,” said Dodgers baseball operations, Andrew Friedman. “But we set out to see this as a way to place it in the best position to launch for the next nine years and prioritize longevity, and this first year back, it is really important for that long -term aspect not to be too aggressive right now.”
Ohtani, however, is forcing the situation. Around 2 pm on Tuesday, he completed three tickets and accumulated six strikeouts against a pair of low -level minor leagues players, throwing their line at speeds between 90 and 95 mph, and unleashing several dangerous sweeps. Later, the manager of the Dodgers, Dave Roberts, estimated that Ohtani’s possibilities of joining the rotation before the spare of the stars game were practically null, a sign that the deadline could have accelerated, even if it were only slightly. The designation of Ohtani as a two -way pitcher makes him the luxury of having an additional pitcher, which allows Dodgers to bring him back before he is completely exhausted. The control that already shows only makes it more attractive.
But as this process has demonstrated, things can change.
After navigating a progression of pitchers towards the end of the regular season of 2024, the Dodgers elaborated a plan in which Ohtani would essentially stop launching during the playoffs and would resume him relatively early in the winter. Then, Ohtani torn the left shoulder labr in the second game of the World Series, which required an out -of -season surgery and caused spring training to become practically their low seasonal release program.
He paused before the inaugural series of the season in Japan in mid -March, and then resumed his activity slowly after the return of the Dodgers to the United States. Later, when unforeseen circumstances arose (an extra game of extra tickets in New York, bad weather in San Luis), their launch sessions were delayed. Ohtani must still reach 70 launches before Dodgers can even think about freeing him as a pitcher, even if he will not initially release so many in a game. When you return, it will have been 22 or 23 months from surgery that generally implies a period of 12 to 14 months.
Their recovery has forced Dodgers to be agile, but above all, patients.
“We need to be healthy,” recognized the third base of the Dodgers, Max Muncy. “They are moving slowly, and we are all happy with that. Obviously we want it to be throwing, but first of all, we want it to be healthy. When you do what he does, it is so unheard of that I do not know if there is a precise period. It could be advancing faster than I should right now; we really don’t know because it has never been done before.”
Despite how dominant Ohtani has proven to be as a pitcher (he achieved an effectiveness of 2.84 and accumulated 542 strikeouts in 428⅓ inputs from 2021 to 2023 before suffering a second rupture of the ulnar collateral ligament), its impact on the offensive has become too important to risk it.
Since the beginning of the 2023 season, his last with Los Angeles Angels, Ohtani occupies the first place in the major leagues in homers (121), second in PAHO (1,042), fifth on average batting (. Last year, he became the first full -time batter to win an MVP. This year, beats for .292/.386/.625, and is on its way to connect 54 homers, matching the personal record that established the previous season.
However, its stolen base rate has dropped to 26, 33 less than those registered in 2024. Ohtani stole its eleventh base on May 20 and has not done it again since then. His caution in the bases has coincided with the intensification of his rehabilitation as a pitcher. Roberts said he did not know if there was a direct correlation, and Ohtani, who rarely grants interviews, has not been available to talk about it. But the fall emphasizes the resistance required to hit and launch simultaneously.
The Dodgers have guided that idea.
“I can’t imagine how exhausting it is to do both,” said Friedman. “It is one thing to have that rhythm and be fit for that. But I have not done both, and this is quite unexplored because we have never seen someone who does both at this level. So we simply try to do everything possible to strengthen the muscles of the right arm, but also to increase physical resistance to do both things and not fatigue it in a way that affects its offensive.”
When Ohtani joined the Dodgers and began his progression as a batter in the spring of 2024, almost all his swings were exactly 70 mph. Later that summer, when he began to launch with more intensity, got used to calculating the exact speed of his releases and almost always succeeded. Brandon McDaniel, who was coach of strength and conditioning of the Dodgers and players performance director before promoting the coaching staff this season, has been working with elite athletes for two decades and has never met one as in tune with his body as Ohtani.
“It’s almost as if he had a monitor in his engine, in front, like a board,” McDaniel said.
The majority is still good for rehabilitation scripts, McDaniel explained, but Ohtani does not seem to need one. His intuition about what his body requires at all times is unmatched. And no matter how careful the Dodgers have been with Ohtani’s progression in their pitching, they have also lost their fear of being exceeded and delayed. Thanks to that, mutual trust has been developed.
“Obviously he wants to press; he has been doing it,” McDaniel said. “But it has been a great balance to calculate when to press, when to increase the speed and when to increase the effects, things like that. And, ultimately, as is a versatile player, we have no clock. So when he feels he is ready, that is the first part of the conversation.”
The Dodgers deployed a franchise record with 40 pitchers during the 2024 season, and then leaning on a rotation of three pitchers and continuous Bullpen games to win the championship. This year it was supposed to be different, and yet it has been disturbingly similar. Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki, three openers who were expected to lead one of the best baseball rotations, are low due to shoulder ailments, joining 11 other pitchers on the injured list. The Dodgers have already used 30 players to launch, more than any other team in the League. Its bullpen leads the elders in entries released by a wide margin.
But Ohtani stalks in the background, and his return as a pitcher quickly approaches, close enough to imagine it. The preparation alone has been remarkable. Its simulated games, whose volume will continue to increase weekly, usually end approximately four hours before the first launch, after which Ohtani undergoes a maintenance program on his left shoulder and right side while the rest of the Dodgers’ batters prepare for the opening pitcher of that night. Then, as I used to do, take a bat and activate a switch.
Ohtani has a 4 of 11 mark with a homer after his three simulated games this season, an advance of what is to come.
“It’s fun to see it because you enjoy baseball very much,” said the reliever of the Dodgers, Alex Vesia. “He loves baseball. And when you do both, you have to love him like him.”
