After taking a brief respite from batting while pitching last week at home, two days after getting hit by a pitch in his right shoulder, Shohei Ohtani was back to double duty on Wednesday night against the San Francisco Giants at Oracle Park.
He pitched six more scoreless innings to lead the National League with a 0.38 ERA in 24 innings, but was hitless in four at-bat to snap his on-base streak at 53 games, tied with Shawn Green for the longest in Los Angeles Dodgers history. Ohtani’s hitting stats through the first four weeks this season are down relative to his first two full seasons at the plate in Los Angeles, hitting .258/.382/.472 with a 131 wRC+, still well above average.
So far this season Ohtani has batted 111 times and faced 92 hitters while pitching. His 203 total plate appearances are his heaviest workload during a baseball month since 208 PA in July 2023 while with the Angels. His most total PA in a month was 268, in September 2022 (126 batting, 142 pitching).
Ohtani being a full-go as a pitcher from the start of this season, in addition to his batting, which has improved since joining the Dodgers relative to his Angels days, has Mike Petriello at MLB.com wondering what heights Ohtani might now achieve.
“There’s still one more thing we haven’t seen Ohtani do, and that’s to put it all together for a full season, to marry Peak Batting Ohtani and Peak Pitching Ohtani together, at the same time, for six months,” Petriello wrote.
Cubs manager Craig Counsell, whose contract with Chicago raised the bar for managers ahead of Dave Roberts signing his own extension with Los Angeles, criticized MLB’s two-way player rule on Monday. From ESPN:
“It’s a rule to help offense, I think, more than anything, if you ask me,” Counsell said. “And then there’s one team that’s allowed to carry basically one of both, and that he gets special consideration. Which is probably the most bizarre rule. … For one team.”
Two-way players — those with at least 20 major league innings and at least 20 starts as a position player or designated hitter (with at least three plate appearances in each game) in the current or either of the previous two seasons — do not count against the active roster limit of 13 pitchers. The rule was first agreed to by Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association in March 2019, before Ohtani’s second year with the Angels, for implementation beginning in 2020.
Ohtani has been the only player to qualify for two-way status thus far.
Roberts on Monday night in Denver was asked about Counsell’s comments and had, frankly, an appropriate response. From Max Ralph at MLB.com:
“The thing is it certainly benefits us because we have the player,” Roberts said. “But that’s something that, any team that had Ohtani would have that player. We’re more than willing for other teams to go out and find a player who can do both. He’s an exception because he’s an exceptional player. It is what it is.”
Dodgers host the Cubs this weekend at Dodger Stadium, beginning Friday night in Los Angeles.
Dodgers closer Edwin Díaz had arthroscopic surgery on Wednesday to remove loose bodies in his right elbow, and is expected to miss around three months. You might remember his three-year, $69-million contract signed in December, which included a conditional $6.5 million club option for 2029 “if he has a specified injury through the end of the 2028 season and he does not end the season or postseason healthy, or if he has a specified surgery.”
J.P. Hoornstra for Dodgers on SI reported that Wednesday’s surgery was not the kind of procedure that would trigger the option.
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