TORONTO — If this was the floor, what’s the ceiling?
Shohei Ohtani wasn’t sharp Wednesday. The first three innings alone required Ohtani to throw 60 pitches, only 34 of them strikes. In each of those innings, the Blue Jays had runners in scoring position.
Something was off with Ohtani in the Dodgers’ 4-3 loss to the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre, but that’s what made his start extraordinary.
On a day in which he couldn’t throw the baseball where he wanted, Ohtani managed to complete six innings.
In a game in which he struck out only two batters, he limited the defending American League champions to one run, and it was unearned.
“It was a grind,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “You can see it. He didn’t feel synced up with his delivery. You can see by the misses. He was fighting himself the entire outing. But obviously, the compete comes into play, the stuff comes into play, and he found a way to get through six innings giving up one run.
“Pretty impressive, to be quite honest, given how he felt.”
If any of this sounded familiar, it’s because it was.
The way Roberts described Ohtani after this game was how he used to describe Clayton Kershaw on days the future Hall of Famer wasn’t at his best.
Roberts nodded in agreement when this was brought to his attention.
Even the greatest pitchers don’t always dominate. What separates them from others is what they do when they feel how Ohtani did Wednesday.
They make pitches when they absolutely have to make them.
They don’t allow innings to spiral out of control.
In other words, they do what Kershaw used to do — and what Ohtani just did.
“I just wasn’t comfortable throwing,” Ohtani said in Japanese.
Ohtani said he didn’t feel right when playing catch the previous day. That prompted him to enter the bullpen later that day with a silver Sharpie for a shadow-pitching session. He drew marks on his shoes to assist him to figure out where to place his feet.
“When you rely on just your senses,” he said, “there can be misalignment.”
He went through his delivery with the marker in his mouth, but he said there was no baseball-specific reason for that.
“I borrowed that pen from a clubhouse attendant, so I did that to make sure it wouldn’t get dirty,” said Ohtani, who evidently has a super-sanitized oral cavity.
The work didn’t lead to an improved feel the next day, as Ohtani labored through the first three innings of a game that started at 3:08 p.m. local time. He was charged with an unearned run in the third inning when he walked Daulton Varsho, who reached second base on a passed ball and scored on a double by Jesus Sanchez.
“It was at the end of a road trip and closer to a day game [than a night game], so in that sense, I think everyone had some fatigue,” Ohtani said. “I don’t know if that was the reason, but I wasn’t comfortable throwing.”
Ohtani settled down and pitched 1-2-3 innings in the fourth and fifth. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. led off the bottom of the sixth with a double, but Ohtani forced Sanchez to hit a grounder that resulted in Guerrero being thrown out at third base by shortstop Miguel Rojas.
Ohtani completed the inning and departed the game as a pitcher with the Dodgers leading, 3-1. Because the run charged to him was unearned, his ERA remained at 0.00.
Offensively, Ohtani didn’t contribute any hits, but he reached base twice, in the first inning on a walk and again in the fifth when he was hit by a pitch. Walking 10 times in 12 games while being struck by two pitches, Ohtani has an on-base percentage of .407.
He claimed to not be frustrated by how carefully other teams have pitched to him, saying, “I like walks. I’ll take as many as they give me. If a strike comes, I’ll swing at it. Simply, I try to look at it as a task that doesn’t require any thought.”
Ohtani homered three times on the Dodgers’ 5-1 trip, which included a sweep of the Nationals, but he didn’t think he was in particularly good rhythm in the batter’s box, either.
“I think the start of my seasons are always like this,” he said. “I’m at the stage in which I’m gradually improving. It very rarely gets better all of a sudden. If I remain at this pace and get better little by little, I think I can be in a good place by May.”
So Ohtani will continue to plug away, and the Dodgers will wait for him to round into form.
Kershaw didn’t require his body to function the way he wanted for him to keep his team in games. Ohtani doesn’t, either.
