Slow down.
Previously limited to fastballs and splitters, Shohei Ohtani threw a handful of sliders and curveballs in his mid-week bullpen session, but that doesn’t mean he will be a two-way player again before the All-Star break.
Ohtani is lined up to potentially face hitters in a simulated game on Saturday in New York, but that doesn’t mean he will pitch in the upcoming four-week stretch that could determine the course of the Dodgers’ season.
As encouraged as the team is with his progress and as desperate as the Dodgers are for one of their sidelined frontline starters to return, they will continue to slow play Ohtani’s return to the mound, according to a person familiar with the team’s thinking but not authorized to speak publicly.
The Dodgers could use Ohtani’s arm, but they absolutely need his bat, and they don’t plan on jeopardizing his offense by exposing him to any unnecessary risks on the mound.
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Which is a major gamble in itself.
Every one of their next 26 games will be against teams with winning records. Of them, 23 will be against teams that would have qualified for the playoffs if the regular season ended on Wednesday, the exception being the St. Louis Cardinals, who have won 13 of their last 17 games.
Starting on Friday at Citi Field with the opening game of a three-game series against the New York Mets, the stretch of games will include seven meetings with the San Diego Padres and three with the San Francisco Giants.
The Padres were 2 ½ games behind the Dodgers in the National League West entering Thursday. The Giants were just two back.
Considering the state of their pitching staff, the Dodgers could very easily emerge from this stretch of games in second, third, or maybe even fourth place in their division.
Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell will be sidelined for another month, leaving Yoshinobu Yamamoto as the team’s only reliable starter.
Roki Sasaki is targeting a return in late June from what the team described as a shoulder impingement, but the rookie never looked entirely comfortable before he went down, so who knows what he will offer them when he comes back.
Roki Sasaki is one of several Dodgers starting pitchers on the injured list. (Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“Not sure I’ve ever seen their pitching so decimated,” an executive from a rival team said.
The loss of frontline starters is nothing new for the Dodgers, whose injury problems last year practically forced them to acquire Jack Flaherty at the trade deadline. What’s new is their lack of depth.
The returns of Tony Gonsolin and Clayton Kershaw have mitigated the problem but only so much. Along with the inconsistent Dustin May and the consistently mediocre Landon Knack, Gonsolin and Kershaw represent the rotation’s final line of defense.
In previous seasons, the Dodgers always seemed to have 10 pitchers in their organization who could beat a mid- or low-level opponent on any given day. However, the inability to keep their young pitchers healthy has cost them much of that depth. Emmet Sheehan, River Ryan and Gavin Stone underwent major surgeries last year. Michael Grove had a shoulder operation this year. Injuries have turned Bobby Miller into a pedestrian minor leaguer, but if another starter is injured, the Dodgers could be forced to call him up again.
Read more: Yoshinobu Yamamoto starts it, Dodgers finish it with walk-off win over Arizona
Dave Roberts expertly managed a depleted rotation and exhausted bullpen in the playoffs last year, and he’ll have to do it again less than two months into the regular season. He could have to punt on certain games. When his team is behind, he could have to ask his starter to pitch an extra inning or two so that he could save his high-leverage relievers for games in which they are ahead.
This isn’t to say Ohtani’s pitching comeback should be expedited. Whomever they have pitching, the Dodgers will have to score runs to win another World Series, and that starts with Othani. Before they unleash Ohtani the pitcher, they have to protect Ohtani the hitter.
Because of that, they have gambled on May pitching more games like the one he pitched on Wednesday night in a 3-1 victory over Diamondbacks. They have gambled on Kershaw figuring out how to pitch as a 37-year-old returning from multiple operations. And they have gambled on Roberts managing an injury-ravaged pitching staff.
The wagers will decide what kind of season this will be, whether this is a year in which the Dodgers will run away with the NL West or one in which they will have to fight until the final days of the regular season to determine which team is granted a first-round bye in the playoffs.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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