Welcome to The California Post’s weekly Dodgers recap, where baseball writers Dylan Hernández and Jack Harris review the week that was, hand out very official awards, and take stock of the state of the season –– publishing every Thursday.
For better or worse, Shohei Ohtani is no Barry Bonds.
Following five games in which he was thrown a limited selection of hittable pitches, Ohtani stepped into the batter’s box on Wednesday in a situation that called for Cleveland Guardians right-hander Gavin Williams to challenge him. With no outs in the bottom of the sixth inning, the Dodgers had men on first and second base.
“From the side,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “it looked like a good pitch and he just hit the top of it.”
By the time Othani returned to the batter’s box two innings later, his air of invincibility had evaporated into the Los Angeles sky. The Dodgers were down by four runs, but they had runners on second and third.
Left-hander Erik Sabrowski was called out of the bullpen to pitch to Ohtani. Rather than walk him with first base open, Sabrowski threw a curveball that caught the lower outside edge of the strike zone.
Ohtani responded by swinging at two other breaking balls delivered in the same general area – except they were balls. Ohtani whiffed on both of them, and the threat was over.
The Dodgers went on to lose the game, 4-1, and the series, two games to one.
This alone shouldn’t be a source of concern. Ohtani has slumped before, and he will slump again. He will eventually start hitting at some point, and besides, the Dodgers have started the season 4-2 with him batting just .167.
However, if a trend emerged over the first week of games, it was that teams playing the Dodgers really didn’t want Ohtani to beat them. They didn’t care that Kyle Tucker and Mookie Betts were behind him. They didn’t want to pitch to Ohtani, which is why he already has a team-leading seven walks. His on-base percentage of .423 is second on the team to Andy Pages’ .429.
Watching how the Guardians and Arizona Diamondbacks pitched around Ohtani, Roberts was reminded of the best player with whom he ever played.
Roberts and Barry Bonds were both San Francisco Giants in 2007.
Bonds turned 43 in the middle of that season, which turned out to be his last in the majors. His 132 walks that year were the most in baseball.
“I think Barry was as patient and as good as anyone I’ve seen that can take walks, value walks,” Roberts said. “Yeah, there were times where he got a handful of pitches a week to hit. Shohei’s certainly not to that extreme of patience, but he’s doing a good job.”
“Shohei likes to swing the bat,” Roberts said with a smile. “Shohei would go crazy.”
Ohtani will have to figure out how to keep it together, to not allow his desperation to lead to the kind of at-bat he had against Sabrowski.
Andy Pages (.429 average, 1 home run, 5 RBIs, 1.048 OPS)
It’s not just that Pages has a team-best average, or is looking like the one Dodgers regular who managed to carry over his strong spring training.
What has made the third-year slugger the Dodgers’ most standout hitter early on is the way he has conducted his at-bats.
Last year, Pages struck out once in every five trips to the plate. This week, he did it twice in 21 at-bats.
Last year, the younger slugger still looked like, well, a youngster. This week, the 25-year-old played with the confidence of a veteran.
“He’s hitting to all fields,” Roberts said Wednesday after Pages’ 3-for-3 showing. “He’s staying on sliders with two strikes. He’s shooting fastballs. Today, he pulled a sinker 97 for a base hit.”
And “at the end of the day,” Roberts added, “he’s really controlling the zone really well. He’s done that all spring.”
Edwin Díaz (3 games, 3.00 ERA, 2 saves, 4 strikeouts)
With all due respect to Ohtani’s six scoreless innings, Edwin Díaz was the most refreshing development.
The live trumpets. The heavy fastball. And, most importantly, the lack of late-game stress.
Last year, the ninth inning was a recurring nightmare for the Dodgers. Now, with their new $69 million closer, it’s more like a late-night party.
Díaz slammed the door on the Diamondbacks in a pair of one-run wins over the weekend. He closed out another win over the Guardians on Tuesday in what was a non-save situation with the team up four.
Asked why he used Díaz in that latter spot –– especially considering soggy conditions that clearly affected the right-hander while giving one run –– Roberts provided a simple, and telling, answer.
“I wanted to win the game,” he said. “And for me, three, four (runs), Eddie is in. So it’s not just padding his save statistics. I wanted to win the game.”
James Tibbs III (.545 average, 3 HR, 9 RBIs, 8 extra-base hits in triple-A)
One of the feel-good stories of spring training is feeling even better through the first week of the minor-league season.
In his second game of the season, Tibbs went 4-for-5 with two doubles, a triple and three RBIs. The next night, he was 3-for-4 with two home runs, a double, 5 RBIs and a walk. Entering Thursday, he’d made it four-straight contests with multiple hits.
The 23-year-old former first-round pick (and trade deadline acquisition of the club last summer) already entered the season as a potential call-up candidate at some point this year. Now, that timeline seems like it could potentially be accelerating. One week in, he has been putting up video game-esque numbers.
(Where we identify a potential Dodgers’ future acquisition –– sometimes far-fetched, sometimes not)
Munetaka Murakami, 1B, Chicago White Sox (ETA: 2028)
The Dodgers were skeptical of Murakami’s ability to hit a major league fastball, but the Japanese slugger probably won’t hold that against them. Every other team shared their suspicions about the former Japanese league triple-crown winner, and that included the White Sox, who signed him to a two-year, $34-million contract. The deal will allow Murakami to re-enter the free-agent market after the 2027 season, by which time the Dodgers could be looking for a corner infielder. Murakami was primarily a third baseman in Japan, albeit one with a shaky glove.
A member of Japan’s two most recent World Baseball Classic teams, Murakami is chummy enough with Ohtani to be able to make fun of the two-way player’s recent haircut, which is considered outdated in Japan. Murakami told Ohtani that if he didn’t homer in the White Sox’s season opener, he would also get a “techno cut,” which features a straight and angled hairline above the ears. Murakami was spared the unfashionable trim, as he not only homered on opening day but followed up with bombs in the second and third games of the season.
When will the lineup start hitting?
Six games in, this is not the Dodgers’ offense that was advertised.
They rank 19th in scoring, 11th in batting average and 14th in OPS so far as a team. The top of their lineup has been particularly glaring, combining for a .182 average from the Nos. 1-5 spots that is better than only three other teams.
Cue all the caveats about small sample sizes, not jumping to conclusions and overanalyzing the randomness an opening week can often provide.
Still, for a team that slumped through much of the second half of the season and almost all of the playoffs, this has felt uncomfortably familiar –– even if, as Freddie Freeman declared Wednesday, “I think our offense is inevitable.”
“It’s just the first week,” he said. “We’ll be fine.”
— Roki Sasaki made his season debut. Why just because it wasn’t a disaster doesn’t mean it was all that good.
— Alex Vesia made an emotional return to Dodger Stadium after the death of his newborn daughter last October. He is using custom-designed gloves to help honor her memory.
— Freeman’s fine wine tastes most recently include a 2015 Château Cheval Blanc. He’s hoping he can age just as nicely, following an opening week in which he just missed several home runs.
— Clayton Kershaw is back with the Dodgers, hired as a special assistant with a yet-to-be-defined role following his retirement as a player.
— Will Smith has a new title: Most overlooked clutch hitter in the sport.
— Shohei Ohtani got all his teammates new watches.
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