SAN DIEGO (AP) — Shohei Ohtani returned to his full two-way form for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Wednesday, and the results were formidable.
While pitching and hitting in the same game for the first time in four weeks, Ohtani homered on the first pitch of the night and then threw five innings of three-hit ball in Los Angeles’ 4-0 victory over the San Diego Padres.
After launching his eighth homer of the season and then lowering his ERA to a minuscule 0.73, Ohtani took satisfaction in doing it all even on a night when he didn’t feel sharp on the mound.
But in a series-clinching victory over the rival Padres, Ohtani still did enough in both areas to carry the back-to-back World Series champions yet again.
Ohtani said through his interpreter that he had “a lot of uncertainty coming into this outing, because the feel wasn’t great. And so the results were good, but as you saw, the process wasn’t that great. … I have a pretty high standard in terms of performance, so it didn’t really match.”
Two-way superstardom is a burden unique to Ohtani, and he hasn’t been shouldering it as effortlessly as usual this season. While his pitching numbers are stellar — his ERA is now the lowest in the majors among pitchers with at least 25 innings of work — he fell into a slump at the plate in April and struggled into May, with his power production particularly languishing.
“Like we all know, he wants to win that Cy Young, and he wants to help us win games, and he wants to be a really productive offensive player,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “At this point in time, he’s doing all of the above.”
While Ohtani has snapped out of his slump at the plate with 13 hits over the past seven games, he hadn’t produced offensively this season in games in which he was also pitching, so Roberts kept the bat out of his hands in his past three mound starts.
The four-time MVP wasn’t thought to be particularly happy about the decision, and Roberts only had his pitcher back in the lineup at Petco Park because the Dodgers have a day off Thursday.
Ohtani showed his approval of the return by immediately driving Randy Vásquez’s high fastball 398 feet to center field for his eighth homer of the season and his 27th career leadoff homer.
“I think that he’s very mindful of everything that’s said about him, and at times he uses that as motivation to prove people wrong, that he can do something,” Roberts said. “I think that he likes to contribute, and I know that he’s heard about (his struggles) on days that he pitches or days after he pitches. So for him to homer in that first at-bat, I think he was like, `OK, I’ve contributed on the offensive side.’ And then he took some good at-bats tonight.”
Ohtani is the only player in major league history to hit a game-opening homer as a pitcher, and he has now done it twice. The first time was in one of the greatest single-game performances in baseball history — his three-homers-and-a-pitching-victory classic in the clinching Game 4 of last fall’s National League Championship Series against Milwaukee.
This time, Ohtani the pitcher gave thanks to Ohtani the hitter for the early lead.
“The goal as a pitcher is not to give up the first run, so I was glad I was able to not do that,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “I was glad we were able to score first.”
And that was all the run support he needed: Ohtani has allowed just four earned runs in 49 innings this season, holding his opponents scoreless in five of his eight starts.
His pitching performance in San Diego wasn’t smooth, but it was effective.
Although he retired the Padres’ first nine batters, Ohtani needed 52 pitches to do it, and he eventually made his shortest mound start of the season — the first with fewer than six innings of work — along with just 88 pitches, one more than his season low. Roberts gave him a short leash because Ohtani was also in the lineup.
“It’s just another case in point that it’s good for us to be mindful of the workload and just not take that for granted,” Roberts said. “But again, he’s pretty special.”
Ohtani had to escape jams in his final two innings, but he pulled it off.
After San Diego loaded the bases with one out in the fifth on two singles and a walk, Ohtani got Fernando Tatis Jr. to ground into a double play on his final pitch.
The superstar loved it, visibly roaring while exuding a joy he rarely expresses as a hitter.
“I loved the results, but I had walked the guy before, and that wasn’t quite exactly what I wanted to do there, so just the results were good,” Ohtani said.
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