The night Shohei Ohtani’s injury problems first became prevalent this season, that was how Dodgers manager Dave Roberts described his initial concern level with the two-way star.
Months later, of course, the circumstances have ominously flipped.
Ohtani is still hurt. He has been shut down as a pitcher. And on Friday, in what felt like a last-ditch effort to improve his health before the playoffs, he was placed on the injured list for his first time with the Dodgers.
“It’s the right thing to do,” Roberts said. “I think that we tried to kick the can as much as we could.”
Indeed, the saga dates all the way back to a mid-June series in Pittsburgh; when, a night after making a two-way start, Ohtani was pulled from the team’s subsequent game early with swelling in his left knee.
At every step along the way since then, there has been a common pattern of decisions that simply haven’t panned out.
All season, the Dodgers and Ohtani routinely downplayed concern surrounding his health status. In hindsight, they too often seemed too willing to let him push through his ailments, even as he pursued both hitting and pitching duties as an everyday fixture in the lineup.
Granted, at most points, there were few obvious answers about what to do in a given moment. And on several occasions, the club did dial down the four-time MVP’s workload amid his ongoing left knee and, later, right arm issues.
But the team certainly didn’t think it was barreling toward this place either –– where Ohtani is going on the IL after looking physically diminished at the plate in recent weeks, and still feeling pain even after multiple days out of the starting lineup.
“Anyone can do [look back], and say, ‘What could you have done better or different?’ Absolutely,” manager Dave Roberts conceded this week. “That’s something going forward we’re gonna look at. But it’s certainly not a blame game thing.”
Blame game or not, however, Ohtani’s IL stint does bring about a moment of reflection.
Thus, the California Post retraced the timeline of his injury problems this season, to recount exactly how his health drifted so far off course that it is now threatening to impact his play the rest of the year.
June 10: After 10 dominant outings to begin his season as a pitcher (6-2 record, 0.74 ERA), Ohtani suffered his first relative clunker on the mound in Pittsburgh. He gave up four runs (three earned) in 6 ⅔ innings. He also quietly dealt with flaws in his pitching mechanics, with too much force being absorbed by his front landing leg. He would later point to that as the initial cause of his knee injury. But in the moment, there was no sign anything was amiss with his health.
June 11: That would change the next night, when for the fifth time this season Ohtani DH’d the day immediately after a pitching start.
In the sixth inning, Ohtani reported swelling in the back of his knee to the training staff. In a move Roberts later described as “proactive,” the team pulled him from the game then and there.
The Dodgers rested Ohtani the following day, but never seriously seemed to consider the IL, after medical imaging produced “no findings” of further damage. Instead, once the swelling in Ohtani’s knee went down, and the player reported to the team that he felt “great,” they reinserted him in the lineup two games later –– when, in his first at-bat back, he hit a leadoff home run.
Less than a week later, he wouldn’t even have his next pitching start delayed.
“I think I can continue playing … without any uncertainty,” Ohtani said in Japanese on June 12. “I think I should be able to recover [as a pitcher] adequately while making adjustments.”
June 17: Pitching for the first time since his knee injury, Ohtani struggled in a six-inning, four-run start against the Rays. Afterward, he acknowledged that he still wasn’t 100%, while Roberts echoed that his knee problem wasn’t “completely behind us.”
Yet, the right-hander threw 91 pitches in the outing, despite also battling a blister that left his fingers bloodied. And though he didn’t start the game as DH, he came off the bench to pinch-hit.
“Things like this happen over the course of a season,” Ohtani said in Japanese of his ailments after the victory, in an effort to calm external worries. “I think it was big to be able to win under those conditions.”
July 3: Ohtani made what would turn out to be his final appearance on the mound this season in a six-inning, three-run, nine-strikeout start against the San Diego Padres –– looking almost back to his normal self before, in the seventh inning, he was suddenly pinch-hit for after feeling tightness in his right biceps.
That prompted the biggest revelation of the night, with Ohtani saying afterward he had quietly dealt with a similar problem about a month prior.
Roberts later conceded he hadn’t even been aware of that episode, though insisted that was only because it “was so benign.” This time, both Ohtani and the team expected that to be the case again.
July 10: The first sign Ohtani’s situation was worse than he and the team had let on came in an unexpected club announcement a few days before the All-Star Game.
The Dodgers said Ohtani would be skipping his final pitching start of the first half, as well as all Midsummer Classic festivities. Instead, he was set to get treatment on his knee during the break, in the form of a lubricant injection that was hoped to resolve the issue.
Still, the Dodgers did not put Ohtani on the IL, maintaining a belief his injuries only impacted his pitching. Initially, their hope was even for him to resume his two-way role once the second half of the season began.
“We all know with where we’re at, who he is as a player, if there’s opportunities to be extra cautious and mindful, it’s just prudent,” Roberts said, before later insisting: “Nothing is gonna come in front of being healthy for October.”
July 22: For the first time since his knee injection, Ohtani attempted a pitching ramp-up with a 31-throw bullpen session in Philadelphia. It would be short-lived.
Though the immediate reports on his bullpen were positive, Ohtani experienced what Roberts said was “regression” with his knee in the days that followed. It shut him down from throwing again. It forced the Dodgers to re-evaluate his pitching plan.
“We’re not going to move forward until he feels 100% confident, we feel 100% confident that we should do it,” Roberts said. “So right now we didn’t do it.”
July 28: Amid his repeated pitching setbacks, Ohtani also stumbled into a midseason slump at the plate. One potential reason, as he revealed in late July, was that, in addition to his knee injury, his right arm still didn’t feel right.
In the same press scrum where Ohtani made that revelation, he also indicated his pain level with both issues might not get back to zero before the end of the season.
It was all part of a growing trend of developments that made an IL stint feel like more of a possibility.
But instead, after a day off on July 30, Ohtani went on to start at DH in each of the team’s next 30 games.
August 28: Just as Ohtani’s hitting rebounded in the early weeks of August, the Dodgers decided to let him try ramping up once more as a pitcher again. At first, it went OK, with Ohtani reporting no issues following a couple bullpen sessions. But then, discomfort in both his knee and arm returned after a live session against hitters on Aug. 28. It continued to linger in a subsequent bullpen on Aug. 28.
At that point, the Dodgers scratched Ohtani from his tentatively scheduled return to the mound two days later.
They halted his throwing activities for the third different time this year.
“His value offensively is hugely important,” Roberts said. “So if throwing potentially cuts into that, that’s not worth the squeeze.”
The only problem: Ohtani’s swing had already seemingly been affected by that point, with the slugger mired in the early stages of what would become a homer-less 6-for-49 slump.
Yet, the team still wasn’t planning to pull the plug on Ohtani’s pitching, despite him running out of time to get fully stretched out. As president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said on the first day of September: “I think anything he can do is very additive and very helpful.”
Sept. 2: The very next night, Ohtani reached the tipping point, when he went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts while showing visible pain with his arm. That finally forced the Dodgers to give him his first extended break of the season, holding him out of their next four games.
Ohtani returned to action Monday only for his arm pain to persist in an 0-for-3 showing. However, Ohtani evidently didn’t alert the team to his latest discomfort until the following evening, according to Roberts, after he’d been removed from the lineup again in a form of load management.
Thus, at long last, the Dodgers finally opted to place Ohtani on the IL –– making one last delayed decision with which even Roberts voiced some regret.
Now, Ohtani’s pitching plans are officially off. And he’s likely to enter the playoffs feeling less than 100% physically at the plate.
It’s not the absolute worst-case scenario for the Dodgers, who remain hopeful Ohtani will be a productive member of their lineup for their World Series three-peat push. There’s no guarantee that, regardless of what they did, he would find himself back at full strength by now, either.
Still, his current circumstances couldn’t be much further from ideal.
In a year the Dodgers and Ohtani thought they could manage his injuries and preserve his everyday two-way role, they instead might’ve pushed too hard –– and left too little time –– for him to feel right by the time October begins.
“It’s, I guess, under the thing of, ‘you don’t know until you know,’ and it’s important to kind of learn from experiences,” Roberts said this week while reflecting back on the team’s handling of Ohtani this season. “I think it’s good for all of us to kind of appreciate that he’s not supernatural, as much as we think he might be at times.”
