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Alden Gonzalez
LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani’s 87th pitch on Wednesday, a slider, induced a harmless groundout that also triggered a milestone. With it, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way superstar completed five innings for the first time since coming back from a second repair of an ulnar collateral ligament, a sign that his prolonged pitching rehab had finally reached its conclusion.
Ohtani, though, had no time to appreciate the moment; it was his turn to hit.
Rather than make the rounds along the third-base dugout and take a rest on the bench, Ohtani hurriedly donned a batting helmet, strapped on some elbow and shin guards, grabbed his bat, and readied himself to lead off the bottom of the fifth inning. By that point, he had already done most of the heavy lifting — by igniting a four-run rally, by holding the visiting Cincinnati Reds to one run and by setting the tone in his first Dodgers win of the season.
“I’m excited for Shohei,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said after a 5-1, sweep-clinching victory. “You know, he was one hitter away from not getting a chance to get a win because of the pitch count, so I think it was good for him to get that win.”
For now, the Dodgers are essentially treating five innings — and somewhere in the neighborhood of 90 pitches — as Ohtani’s limit this season. Ohtani called reaching that threshold “really key in terms of moving forward,” but the way he got there was just as important.
After back-to-back starts in which he allowed a combined nine runs in 8⅓ innings against the last-place Colorado Rockies and Los Angeles Angels, Ohtani relied heavily on his breaking pitches while limiting the Reds to one run — a solo homer by Noelvi Marte — and striking out a season-high nine batters. Ohtani had not thrown a curveball until his eighth start of the season, on Aug. 6, then flashed only 11 of them over a stretch of three outings. On Wednesday, Ohtani uncorked 17 of them, four of which resulted in strikeouts.
After relying heavily on his four-seam fastball and sweeper early in his return, Ohtani was suddenly leaning on what might amount to his fifth-best pitch, a key in his quest to consistently pitch deep into games.
“We’d had a plan of kind of living away from the fastball as much as we had in the past couple starts,” Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing said. “That doesn’t mean we weren’t going to throw it tonight, but we were very off-speed-heavy early on. That just opened up doors later with the fastball for the last two innings.”
Early in his return, Ohtani explained, the goal was to make sure his fastball velocity was where it needed to be. The sweeper functioned as an effective secondary weapon, helping him navigate shorter outings. Those two accounted for 81% of the pitches Ohtani threw when he faced the Reds in Cincinnati on July 30, a start that was interrupted by leg cramps. About a month later, Ohtani threw only 35% sweepers and fastballs. The other 65% was absorbed by splitters, sinkers, cutters, sliders and, mostly, curveballs.
“I think the great thing about Shohei is he can command, when he’s right, four or five pitches,” Roberts said. “When you’re trying to go through a lineup three times, you’ve got to at times be able to go to different pitches and sequences. To continue to build him up and give us options if we want to get a little bit more length out of him is certainly helpful, but this was a good marker, to get to 90 pitches through five innings.”
Ohtani threw seven different pitches in a scoreless first inning, ranging from 76 to 99 mph. He issued two walks and threw two wild pitches in the second but got out of the inning unscathed by striking out Ke’Bryan Hayes on a 100 mph fastball and Matt McLain on an 89 mph sweeper. After Marte’s homer in the top of the third — on a first-pitch cutter down the middle — Ohtani retired eight consecutive batters to finish his outing.
In the middle of that, he led off the bottom of the fourth with a line drive single, accounting for the first baserunner allowed by Reds left-hander Nick Lodolo. Teoscar Hernandez, Andy Pages, Enrique Hernandez and Rushing, who came through after the Reds intentionally walked Miguel Rojas ahead of him, contributed singles, giving the Dodgers a lead they would not relinquish.
The Dodgers won their fourth straight game, giving themselves a two-game lead on the San Diego Padres in the National League West, and seem to be trending upward. Their bullpen, ravaged by injury for most of the year, is finally starting to round into form. Their offense will get two key players back in Max Muncy and Tommy Edman in the near future. And their rotation — consisting of Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Emmet Sheehan and Ohtani — looks especially formidable.
“Just looking at our roster, I really like where we’re at in terms of our starting pitchers and bullpen,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “I just want to make sure that I do my part as a starting pitcher to go deeper into games and help out the bullpen.”