Amid absolute pandemonium at Dodger Stadium on Friday night, an unexpected cause for concern arose in the home dugout.
Shortly after completing a six-inning, three-run start as a pitcher against the San Diego Padres, Shohei Ohtani was removed from the game as a hitter in the bottom of the seventh, when Miguel Rojas pinch-hit for him shortly after a go-ahead grand slam from Teoscar Hernández in the Dodgers’ come-from-behind 4-3 win.
The reason for Ohtani’s removal: Tightness in his right bicep he had felt during his final at-bat as a hitter in the game.
“Just kinda tightened up on him,” manager Dave Roberts said.
On the bright side, both Ohtani and Roberts described the superstar’s exit as a “precautionary” decision, and downplayed the potential severity of the injury.
However, Roberts said Ohtani would still be out of the lineup on Saturday, to “give him a day to fully recover, treat it up.”
“We’ll just go from there,” the skipper added.
Ohtani did not appear to be laboring physically in his two-way performance Friday, even as he grinded through an 110-pitch effort –– which included nine strikeouts, but also nine baserunners allowed (seven hits, two walks), to leave him with a 1.79 ERA on the season and a mediocre 4.38 ERA over his last four starts.
However, during his final at-bat in the bottom of the sixth, he said in Japanese that there “was something that concerned me a little with my biceps” after lifting a flyout to right field.
He said it only impacted his swing, and that he felt no problem while pitching.
Ohtani later revealed that he had dealt with similar discomfort in batting practice earlier this season, but noted “it got better relatively quickly then, so I think that will be the case again this time.”
“You know what, [that instance] was so benign, that I didn’t hear about it until tonight,” Roberts added when asked about Ohtani’s previous bicep issue. “It didn’t take him out of playing.”
Ohtani’s absence didn’t put a damper on the Dodgers’ comeback Friday, when they overcame a 3-0 deficit in the bottom of the seventh.
After six dominant innings from Padres ace Michael King to start the night, the Dodgers finally knocked him out of the game on a leadoff walk from Mookie Betts and single from Max Muncy. Then, they got a fortuitous break to load the bases against reliever Adrian Morejon, with Kyle Tucker’s would-be double-play grounder getting booted by Jake Cronenworth at second base.
Just like that, Hernández stepped up representing the go-ahead run.
And on the first pitch he saw –– a hanging slider over the plate –– the veteran slugger blasted a grand slam that unleashed perhaps the loudest reaction from the crowd all season.
Hernández chucked his bat with an emphatic flip, then rounded the bases as Chavez Ravine shook in celebration, helping the Dodgers –– even without Ohtani at the end –– extend their division lead over the Padres to 14 games.
“We believe in each other, we know what we can do, we know the players that we have, and we’re never out of the game,” Hernández said, after keying the Dodgers’ second stunning comeback against San Diego in as many nights. “That’s our mentality every day that we go into the field. It happens to keep showing every single day.”
What it means
The initial belief might be that Ohtani’s injury is nothing to worry about.
But it is yet another reminder of the toll that comes with his two-way workload.
Roberts acknowledged that fact, and even left the door open to not having Ohtani make his final pitching start before the All-Star break, which is scheduled for next Friday against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
“I do think that for us to read and react and hear what his body is telling him is really important,” Roberts said, “given the toll it takes on his body to be a two-way player.”
Still, Roberts also called Ohtani a “quick healer” who “finds a way to get back.”
And though Ohtani will get the day off on Saturday, he already felt on Friday night that he would be able to take the field if the team wanted.
“It’s not as if you can be in perfect condition every time you play,” he said.
Who’s hot
Ohtani’s injury aside, the moment of the night was Hernández’s go-ahead blast in the seventh.
The homer was Hernández’s first since returning from a month-long hamstring injury earlier this week.
It was also the best sign yet that he hasn’t lost the hot swing he’d found before going on the IL, having hit .325 with 14 RBIs in his final 24 games before getting hurt.
“It’s just a little bit of everything,” Hernández explained of his emotional reaction to Friday’s big fly, which continued with a string of high-fives and fist pumps on his way back to the dugout, plus a sunflower seed shower from teammate and mentee Andy Pages.
“I’m just trying to find the same swing that I had before I got hurt, and at the same time, just do something for the team,” Hernández added. “It happened to be a big swing.”
Who’s not
Even before his biceps injury, Friday hadn’t been Ohtani’s most convincing performance.
His pitching outing was a “quality start” only in the most literal sense of the term –– marred by a pair of leadoff walks that led to a run in the first, a home run to Jackson Merrill on a center-cut fastball in the fourth, and a two-out, run-scoring rally he yielded in the sixth that nearly put the Padres’ lead too far out of reach.
“Good outing,” Roberts called it. “But I think, again, with Shohei, the stuff that he has, he’s just got to be more efficient to get into that seventh inning. And the last few starts, he just hasn’t given himself a chance.”
Ohtani’s bat has quietly cooled off in recent days too, with his 0-for-3 performance on Friday dropping him to 2-for-16 over the last four games.
At the very least, he and catcher Dalton Rushing found better chemistry as batterymates, getting on the same page with their pitch calling (the majority of which was done by Rushing) after their glaring miscommunication in Minnesota last week.
Also, as Ohtani noted, he still “left the game in a place in which we could still hope to win.”
And even without him at the end, Hernández made sure the Dodgers did.
Up next
The Dodgers will try to clinch this four-game series, and grow their monstrous lead in the division even further, in a Fourth of July game on Saturday. Yoshinobu Yamamoto (8-5, 2.67 ERA) faces Padres right-hander Griffin Canning (1-5, 7.09 ERA).
