Dodgers need Shohei Ohtani’s arm, but his bat will do for now

The attrition that has plagued the Los Angeles Dodgers was most stark Tuesday night, when Matt Sauer, a 26-year-old journeyman, was called on to pitch bulk innings and wound up throwing 111 pitches, a career high and at least 29 more than he had tallied at any point in the past two years. He was followed by Enrique Hernandez, the team’s effervescent utility player, who recorded the final seven outs of a lopsided loss to the San Diego Padres by throwing crossbody cutters that barely reached 50 mph, marking the first time in at least 67 years that a Dodgers position player had been called on for more than two innings.

Such is the state of the Dodgers’ pitching staff. Its injury rate is once again alarming, the team’s division lead has become miniscule because of it — and the anticipation around Shohei Ohtani’s return to pitching continues to intensify.

Ohtani took part in his third simulated game hours before the Dodgers deployed the bottom of their depth chart against their biggest rivals, ramping all the way up to 44 pitches. His first start since Aug. 23, 2023, might only be a month away. But the Dodgers vow to remain cautious, no matter how short-handed they might be. Ohtani’s bat is too valuable. His two-way future is too precarious.

“Viewing it on a shorter-term horizon, it’s easy to want to be aggressive and push — I think both from him and from us,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “But we set out to view this as putting him in the best position to pitch over the next nine years and prioritizing longevity, and this first year back, it’s really important for that long-term aspect to not be too aggressive right now.”

Ohtani, though, is forcing the issue. At around 2 p.m. Tuesday, he completed three innings and compiled six strikeouts against a couple of low-level minor leaguers, darting his fastball in the mid- to upper-90s and unleashing a handful of nasty sweepers. Later, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts pinned Ohtani’s chances of joining the rotation before the All-Star break at “north of zero” — a sign that the timeline might have accelerated, even if only slightly. Ohtani’s two-way designation affords the luxury of an extra pitcher, allowing the Dodgers to bring him back before he is fully stretched out. The command he is already displaying has only made that more appealing.

But as this process has shown, things can change.

After navigating through a pitching progression toward the tail end of the 2024 regular season, the Dodgers carved out a plan in which Ohtani would essentially stop throwing during the playoffs and pick back up relatively early in the winter. Then Ohtani tore a labrum in his left shoulder in Game 2 of the World Series, necessitating offseason surgery and prompting spring training to essentially qualify as his offseason throwing program.

He paused leading up to the season-opening series in Japan around the middle of March, then built up slowly after the Dodgers returned to the United States. Later, when unforeseen circumstances emerged — an extra-inning game in New York, unfavorable weather in St. Louis — his throwing sessions were pushed back. Ohtani still must extend into the neighborhood of 70 pitches before the Dodgers can even think about unlocking him as a pitcher, even if he won’t initially throw that many in a game. When he does return, he will either be 22 or 23 months removed from a surgery that typically comes with a 12- to 14-month timeline.

His recovery has forced the Dodgers to be nimble, but most of all, to be patient.

“We need him to be healthy,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “They’re moving slow, and we’re all happy about that. We obviously want him to be pitching, but we want him to be healthy first and foremost. When you’re doing what he’s doing, it’s so unprecedented that I don’t know if there is a proper timeline. He might be moving faster than what he should be moving right now; we don’t really know that because it’s just never really been done before.”

For as dominant as Ohtani has proved to be as a pitcher — he posted a 2.84 ERA and compiled 542 strikeouts in 428⅓ innings from 2021 to 2023 before suffering a second tear of his ulnar collateral ligament — his impact on offense has become too important to risk.

Since the start of the 2023 season, his last with the Angels, Ohtani ranks first in the majors in homers (121), second in OPS (1.042), fifth in batting average (.304), sixth in stolen bases (90) and within the top 1% in average exit velocity, barrel rate and expected slugging percentage. Last year, he chartered the 50/50 club while becoming the first full-time designated hitter to win an MVP. This year, he’s slashing .292/.386/.625 while on pace for 54 home runs, matching a career high he set the season before.

His stolen-base rate, though, is down to 26 — 33 fewer than what he tallied in 2024. Ohtani stole his 11th base on May 20 and hasn’t recorded one since. His caution on the bases has coincided with the escalation of his pitching rehab. Roberts said he didn’t know if there was a direct correlation, and Ohtani, who rarely does interviews, hasn’t been made available to speak on it. But the drop-off emphasizes the endurance required to hit and pitch simultaneously.

The Dodgers have been guided by that thought.

“I can’t imagine how tiring it is to do both,” Friedman said. “It’s one thing when you’re in that rhythm of it and you are in shape for that. But it’s been a while since he did both, and this is pretty uncharted because we’ve never been around a guy that does both at this level. And so it’s just trying to do everything we can to build up the muscles in the right arm but also build up the endurance from a body standpoint of doing both and not fatiguing him in a way that makes his offense suffer.”

When Ohtani first joined the Dodgers and began his hitting progression in the spring of 2024, almost all of his swings were precisely 70 mph. Later that summer, when he began to play catch with more intensity, he made a habit of guessing the precise velocity of his throws and was almost always right. Brandon McDaniel, who was the Dodgers’ strength and conditioning coach and director of player performance before being elevated to the coaching staff this season, has spent two decades working with elite athletes and has never met one as in tune with his body as Ohtani.

“It’s almost like he has a monitor to his engine, in front, like a dashboard,” McDaniel said.

Most are good at following the scripts mapped out for their rehabs, McDaniel explained, but Ohtani doesn’t seem to need one. His feel for what his body requires in a given moment is unparalleled. And so for as careful as the Dodgers have been with Ohtani’s pitching progression, they’ve also become unafraid that he’ll go too hard and set himself back. Through that, a trust has developed.

“He obviously wants to push; he’s been pushing,” McDaniel said. “But it’s just been such a great balance of taking very calculated strikes of when we’re going to push and when we’re going to add velo and when we’re going to add spin, things like that. And ultimately, because he’s a two-way player, we don’t have a clock. And so when he feels like he’s ready, that’s the first part of the conversation.”

The Dodgers deployed a franchise-record 40 pitchers during the 2024 season, then rode a three-man rotation and continual bullpen games to a championship. This year was supposed to be different, and yet it has been eerily similar. Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki, three starters who were expected to front one of the best rotations in the sport, are all out with shoulder-related ailments, joining 11 other pitchers on the injured list. The Dodgers have already used 30 players to pitch, more than any other team in the sport. Their bullpen leads the majors in innings by a wide margin.

But Ohtani looms in the background, his pitching return quickly becoming close enough to envision. The buildup alone has been remarkable. His simulated games, which will continue to grow in volume on a weekly basis, usually end roughly four hours before the first pitch, after which Ohtani navigates a maintenance program on his left shoulder and right elbow while the rest of the Dodgers’ hitters prepare for that night’s starting pitcher. Then, like he used to so often, he grabs a bat and flips a switch.

Ohtani is 4-for-11 with a home run following his three simulated games this season, a snapshot of what’s to come.

“It’s fun to watch him because he enjoys the game so much,” Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia said. “He loves baseball. And when you’re doing both, you have to love it the way he does.”