The Dodgers never waver in their game plan for the regular season: win enough games to secure a bye in the opening round of the playoffs and, in so doing, afford players all the down time they need during the summer to be in top form come fall. They do not need to hurry anyone off the injured list so they can squeak out another National League West title.
Unfortunately for the Dodgers and their increasingly perilous hope of a three-peat, they did not follow that game plan with Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers failed Ohtani this summer, and now all that remains is for them to cross their collective fingers and hope for the best.
Hope, as they say, is not a strategy.
The Dodgers should drop Ohtani from the postseason roster.
They won’t. They won’t even take him out of Wednesday’s lineup.
Amid headlines about how the Dodgers might have benched Ohtani for Game 3 of the NL Championship Series, manager Dave Roberts said the thinking was more about coupling Tuesday’s day off with a second consecutive day of rest.
“It was never a benching,” Roberts said.
Read more:Dave Roberts says Shohei Ohtani is adamant he feels good enough, will remain in lineup
Roberts drew a parallel between what might have happened with Ohtani and what did happen with Freddie Freeman during the NLCS two years ago, when the Dodgers provided what the manager called a “reset” — a day off for the team, followed by a rest day for Freeman.
“And he ends up winning the MVP in the World Series,” Roberts said.
Freeman had been playing with a bad ankle for three weeks, and even then he had been more productive that October than Ohtani has been in this one. Ohtani has been playing with a bad knee and biceps for three months, and the Dodgers already have tried intermittent rest.
They tried that in September, twice. They touted their bye week before the start of the playoffs. They talked up their three days off before the start of the NLCS.
They went 0 for 4. Enough already.
Roberts said the Dodgers — not just Ohtani, but the coaching staff and the training staff — see progress. True, no doubt. But we’ve heard similarly encouraging words after each of Ohtani’s rest breaks.
“We’re listening to Shohei, and we’re going to support the crap out of him and believe in him,” Roberts said, “and that’s it.”
Ohtani said Tuesday that his symptoms have subsided since the Dodgers put him on the injured list, for the minimum stay. That was a month ago.
On Tuesday, he said his approaches can alternate between “focusing on reducing the symptoms and getting rid of the pain and/or just making sure that I’m moving well in the swing.”
There is no evidence so far that this might work, and an uncomfortable and increasing body of evidence that it might not.
Ohtani is batting .150 in the playoffs, with three hits in 20 at-bats. Of the 39 players with at least 20 at-bats this postseason entering play Tuesday, only three have a lower OPS than Ohtani’s .411.
One of them, Dodgers catcher Will Smith, has one hit in 23 at-bats. But he is hitting the ball hard: in the NLCS, one ball hit at 102 mph, another at 101, and every ball hit harder than the one Ohtani hit the hardest.
That exit velocity: 86 mph.
He has not pulled a ball in the series for a hit, or for an out.
Over his major league career, he has homered once every 14 at-bats.
He has not hit a home run since Aug. 18, a span of 107 at-bats. He has driven in one run since then; the Dodgers batted him cleanup in Game 2.
And, since hitting that last home run, Ohtani is batting .036 against fastballs thrown 95 mph or harder. The average fastball in this postseason: 96.2 mph, according to analyst Mike Petriello’s close-up of all the different ways Ohtani’s swing is fouled up.
Breaking balls? Brewers reliever JoJo Romero threw him one low and away in Game 2, and Ohtani lost his bat as he lunged to make contact.
When Ohtani spoke with reporters before the playoffs started, he said he might not know the full extent of his injuries or what he might need to do to rehabilitate them until after the postseason.
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“I haven’t been able to get a good grasp of the root cause of all this,” he said then. “I think that process is going to happen during the offseason, when I’m going to have a little bit more time to be able to address it. But as of now, it’s something I’m just going to have to manage.”
The Dodgers did not need Ohtani to win the NL West. They needed to shut him down for an extended period to maximize their chances of winning in October.
They failed to do that. They believed a few days of rest would allow them to nurse Ohtani through the rest of the season.
One big swing in October, and who cares? Ask Kirk Gibson, who hobbled to bat and then hit one of the most dramatic home runs in World Series history.
Here is what the Dodgers ought to keep in mind: That was the only at-bat Gibson took in that 1988 World Series.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.