Dodgers need to rest slumping Shohei Ohtani

Watching Shohei Ohtani extend his slump by another game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said there would be an upcoming game in which the two-way player wouldn’t be in the batting order.

That could be on Wednesday, when Ohtani is scheduled to pitch. Or that could be on Thursday, when the Dodgers host the San Francisco Giants in the finale of their four-game series.

At this point, Roberts might as well go a step further. He might as well force Ohtani to take a day off.

Not half-off. Totally off.

No pitching, no hitting, no nothing.

No batting cage, no weight room.

Because the way Ohtani looks now, nothing outside of his track record points to him hitting any time soon.

This isn’t just about his numbers, which continue to decline. This is about how he looks.

If Ohtani is exhausted, weak or injured, he’s not saying. But a scout’s eye isn’t required to tell something’s not right with him. And as much as Ohtani has downplayed his early-season form by citing his history as a slow starter, his actions indicate he’s concerned.

Before the Dodgers’ 9-3 defeat to the San Francisco Giants on Monday night, Ohtani broke from his practice of not taking batting practice on the field. Ohtani also hit outdoors a week earlier when the Dodgers were in Houston to play the Astros.

In both instances, Ohtani went into the bullpen to prepare for upcoming starts as a pitcher. In Houston, he threw after he hit. At Dodger Stadium, he threw before he hit.

“In Houston, BP he hit before his bullpen,” Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates said. “A little more tired for the bullpen, so this time he decided to hit after.”

The congested pregame schedules on those days were examples of a problem Ohtani mentioned a couple of weeks ago. When he’s in rhythm at the plate, he said his responsibilities as a pitcher don’t interfere with him maintaining his form. But he admitted that he can’t spend as much time as he would like modifying an out-of-whack swing.

Ohtani cleared the right-field pavilion in batting practice on Monday, but he also hit a surprising number of grounders to his pull side. Was he affected by his bullpen session? Only Ohtani knows.

Whatever the case, after throwing 23 pitches in the bullpen and taking 52 swings in batting practice, Ohtani looked worn down. His lethargic swings from batting practice followed him into the game, with three of his at-bats resulting in groundouts to the right side of the infield, including twice with runners in scoring positions.

“That’s kind of telling me there’s a little overanxiousness, in my opinion,” Roberts said.

Ohtani struck out in his two other at-bats, his batting average dropping to .233 and his OPS to .767. Since 2021, when he won his most valuable player award, his batting average hasn’t been this low 41 games into a season.

He hasn’t homered in his last 50 plate appearances, and that’s not even his longest home-run drought of the season. His most recent homer, on April 26, ended a homerless streak of 59 consecutive plate appearances.

An unproductive Ohtani has translated into an unproductive lineup for the Dodgers, who have lost 13 of their last 22 games.

Roberts said this is the worst he’s ever seen Ohtani at the plate.

“I think even early on, when he wasn’t right, he was still taking walks and getting on base,” Roberts said. “But I think right now, and tonight was a classic example, I think he’s just trying to swing out of it. So that’s just apparent. And a lot of hitters, when they are scuffling, they want to kind of swing out of it.”

The downturn in offensive production could very well be a consequence of his return to pitching full-time, something he didn’t do in his two previous seasons with the Dodgers. For what it’s worth, his career-worst homerless streak of 93 plate appearances came in the same season in which he pitched a career-high number of innings. That was in 2022, with the Angels.

Something else to consider: Ohtani turns 32 in July.

His reluctance to link his problems hitting to his pitching is entirely understandable, as he’s encountered varying degrees of opposition to playing both ways going back to when he was in Japan. That doesn’t mean the Dodgers should ignore what’s in front of them.

When the Dodgers signed Ohtani, they committed to providing him with a platform to continue his unprecedented act. By refusing to acknowledge the reality of his physical limitations, they would be pushing him closer to deciding whether to focus on hitting or pitching. The best way they could support him now is to do everything they can to ensure that he remains an effective two-way player. At this moment, that calls for a break.

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