Dave Roberts described it as an easy decision.
If only it hadn’t come with such disastrous consequences.
In the middle of the fifth inning Tuesday night, Shohei Ohtani returned to the Dodgers‘ dugout in the midst of his best pitching performance all season.. Waiting for him at the top step was manager Dave Roberts, wanting to ask how he felt after completing five innings for only the second time this year.
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With any other pitcher, what happened next would have been simple.
At that point, Ohtani had not given up a hit to the Philadelphia Phillies. He had thrown only 68 pitches. He was flashing the kind of dominance that would have made a no-hitter feel like a real possibility.
With any other pitcher, Roberts would have extended the leash.
Ohtani, however, is not like any other pitcher.
He is a two-way star, coming off a second career Tommy John surgery, who has been managed with kid gloves and bubblewrap in his return to pitching duties this year. He started his comeback by pitching one inning, then two, then so on until he built up to five. Weeks ago, the team — in consultation with club doctors, Ohtani’s agent and the reigning MVP himself — decided to avoid pushing him past the five-inning mark for at least the remainder of the regular season.
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His health, both on the mound and at the plate, remains the priority.
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Thus, while Ohtani told Roberts he still felt good, Roberts said he never had any thought of sending him out for the sixth. Roberts’ question, the manager later explained, was only to ascertain information for future decision-making over Ohtani’s workload. As far as Tuesday was concerned?
“He wasn’t gonna go back out,” Roberts said.
By not sending Ohtani back out, of course, the Dodgers rolled the dice with their ever-faulty bullpen. And in one of the group’s worst performances this year, they yielded nine painful runs over a miserable four innings in a nightmarish 9-6 loss to the Phillies at Dodger Stadium.
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“We’ve been very steadfast in every situation as far as innings for [Ohtani’s] usage — from one inning to two innings to three to four to five. We haven’t deviated from that,” Roberts said.
“I was trying to get his pulse for going forward, where he’s at, continuing to go to the sixth inning. And he says, ‘Feel OK.’ So that was good. But I’m not gonna have a plan for five innings, and then he pitches well and say, ‘Hey, now you’re gonna go six innings.’ He’s too important. And if something happens, then that’s on me for changing it, and we haven’t done that all year.”
What the Dodgers have done all year is watch their bullpen meltdown in late-game situations.
On Tuesday night, it happened again, starting as soon as Ohtani left the mound with a 4-0 cushion.
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In the top of the sixth, the Phillies swiftly took the lead with five straight knocks against Justin Wrobleski, including a two-run double from Bryce Harper and a go-ahead three-run home run from Brandon Marsh, then extended it with another home run from Max Kepler off Edgardo Henriquez that made it 6-4.
Shohei Ohtani watches his 50th home run of the season. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
The Dodgers battled back to level the score in the eighth, with the help of Ohtani’s 50th home run of the season, making him just the sixth player in MLB history with consecutive 50-homer campaigns, only to have the bullpen turn right back around and blow things again in the ninth, when Blake Treinen gave up a decisive three-run home run to backup Phillies catcher Rafael Marchán.
“That’s just the way it goes,” Roberts said. “Guys gotta do their jobs.”
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For the first five innings Tuesday, Ohtani displayed utter dominance against the only team to have already clinched a division title.
His fastball was playing up, eclipsing 100 mph seven times and topping out at 101.7 mph (tied for his hardest throw all season). His secondary stuff was electric, a mix of sliders and sweepers and curveballs and splitters that kept the Phillies off balance and able to make only weak contact.
Ohtani walked Harper with two outs in the first, then retired each of the last 13 batters he faced. He collected five strikeouts, and worked as efficiently as he has in any of his 13 pitching appearances this year.
“They were obviously not getting many good swings off him,” Roberts said. “He was dominant.”
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Still, as the five-inning red line approached, Roberts said he never considered crossing it. Even with Ohtani still 19 pitches shy of his previous season-high (he threw 87 pitches in his only other full five-inning start on Aug. 27), the manager got the bullpen active.
“He’s two players in one,” Roberts said, reiterating why he was not going to deviate from the club’s five-inning plan for Ohtani. “If something happens, then we lose two players … We haven’t done it all year. So, I’m not gonna do it tonight.”
Ohtani didn’t appear to protest, saying in Japanese afterward: “The decision of whether to take me out is something I leave completely to the manager.”
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When asked if he feels like he could pitch past the fifth inning come the playoffs — something both Roberts and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman have said is a possibility, but yet to be decided — Ohtani chuckled.
“There’s no point in asking me,” he said. “I can’t say. You’re asking the wrong person.”
Granted, Tuesday’s game shouldn’t have been in doubt either way.
The Dodgers (84-67) had scored three runs in the second inning on home runs from Alex Call and Kiké Hernández. They added another in the fourth off Phillies left-hander Cristopher Sánchez, handing the Cy Young contender just his fourth start this season of more than three earned runs.
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But then, a bullpen that had been burned repeatedly in recent weeks played with fire again –– failing to get production from promising rookies like Wrobleski and Henriquez, or a trustworthy but scuffling veteran like Treinen either.
“They’re lacking confidence,” Roberts said of the bullpen, which now has a 4.30 ERA on the season (ranking 20th in the majors) and has given up 13 runs in its last eight innings this week to the Phillies (who are a potential postseason opponent for the Dodgers and lead them by 6 ½ games for the final first-round bye in the National League playoff picture).
“I believe in the talent,” Roberts added. “But right now they just don’t have the confidence that they need to have to be consistent.”
Or, it turned out, to salvage Ohtani’s no-hit (but short-lived) masterpiece.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.