NEW YORK — Shohei Ohtani’s ailing left knee is set to keep him off the mound for the foreseeable future.
But in the early game of a Sunday doubleheader against the Yankees, the two-way star offered the latest sign that his ongoing injury isn’t doing much to hamper his bat.
In the Dodgers’ 8-2 win, which was played Sunday afternoon following a Saturday night rainout, Ohtani opened the scoring with an RBI double in the third inning, came around to score on Freddie Freeman’s RBI single later in the frame, and set the Dodgers on course to a series-clinching victory at Yankee Stadium — one that was also backed up by Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s two-run complete game effort.
Ohtani’s double came after a one-out single from Tommy Edman in the third inning, when the slugger roped an 111 mph line drive over the head of Max Schuemann in right.
The ball clanged off the wall. The Yankees’ relay was too late to get Edman at the plate. And for the rest of the day, the Dodgers wouldn’t trail, riding Yamamoto’s first career regular-season complete game (to go along with his back-to-back complete games in last year’s playoffs) to a second straight victory coming out of the All-Star break.
There was a brief moment of concern with Ohtani’s left knee his next time up. In the fifth inning, he fouled a ball off his knee before grounding to second and appeared to run somewhat gingerly back to the dugout.
However, he stayed in the game, finished his 2-for-5 day with another RBI (his 60th of the season) on a single in the eighth, and showed that — for now, at least — his knee problem is only problematic for his pitching.
What it means
The Dodgers were struggling going into the All-Star break, getting swept by the Dbacks and dropping four of five overall.
But they’ve kicked off the second half with an impressive performance here in the Bronx, collecting their third straight series win at Yankee Stadium (which doesn’t even include their title-clinching trip in the 2024 World Series) dating back to 2016.
Who’s hot
In what was supposed to be a pitcher’s duel between Yamamoto and breakout Yankees star Cam Schlittler, there was no comparison to be made between the two All-Star right-handers.
Schlittler was knocked out of the game in the fifth, after the Dodgers drove up his pitch count early and tacked on a third run courtesy of Andy Pages’ RBI double — on a blooper to right that saw Pages’ bat fly out of his hands on the follow-through.
Yamamoto, meanwhile, was nearly flawless in his four-hit, seven-strikeout, 102-pitch gem.
He retired his first nine batters in order, needing less than 30 throws over the three perfect innings. He bounced back from his one big mistake in the fourth, retiring nine more in a row after Trent Grisham tagged him with a leadoff home run in the fourth on a 2-0 fastball over the heart of the plate. And after stranding a leadoff double in the seventh, his only other run came after Pages lost a ball in the sun for another leadoff double in the eighth.
In 18 starts this year, he is now 10-6 with a 2.78 ERA.
Who’s not
Everyone who had to try catching the ball in the sun.
Before Pages was left blinded on a Jazz Chisholm Jr. fly that dropped in for a double in the eighth, the Yankees had their own problems battling the bright conditions on Sunday afternoon.
The Dodgers’ first hit of the day came on a shallow Max Muncy pop-up in the second inning that Chisholm lost at second, dropping in for a double.
Later, the Dodgers benefited from two balls that dropped to fuel a five-run rally in the eighth that put the game away. Third baseman Ryan McMahon missed the chance for an easy out on another pop-up he lost in foul territory. Then, Teoscar Hernández hit a fly ball into the right field corner that Schuemann missed on a diving effort, allowing the ball to bounce out of play for a two-run ground-rule double.
Up next
The Dodgers and Yankees conclude this series in the nightcap of Sunday’s doubleheader, when the Dodgers will go with a bullpen game.
