LOS ANGELES — Nobody’s perfect. Not even The Unicorn.
(Then again, when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts responded to Shohei Ohtani’s untidy fifth inning in Wednesday afternoon’s 5-4 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays by saying, “I mean, I don’t think anyone expected him to just never give up runs,” I was tempted to tell him he obviously doesn’t hear from the same fans that I do.)
But it was one shoddy inning, on an afternoon when the blister on his pitching hand was acting up – visibly so, given the image of blood on his baseball pants. Plus, there was the question of whether the knee that he tweaked last week would affect his delivery.
In the fifth, Ohtani pitched to nine Rays and gave up a walk, a double and four singles as the visitors took a 4-2 lead, though in fairness one of those hits was an infield single on which Ohtani and Freddie Freeman had a communications lapse, the upshot being that Ohtani was late covering first base and Cedric Mullins beat out the grounder to load the bases.
Freeman wiped out all of that angst with a two-run homer to dead center in the seventh for a 5-4 lead, and the bullpen – so good in the month of May and so ragged during last week’s road trip – took this one to the house, with Alex Vesia wriggling out of a self-created jam to earn his third save.
But, even with Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Justin Wrobleski consistently outstanding and Roki Sasaki showing more flashes of brilliance the past few weeks, it is Ohtani who will always be the focal point of this rotation and this roster, simply for having the audacity to do something no one else in baseball has ever attempted: Two full-time jobs at once.
Which is why we heard talk, going back to spring training, about Ohtani’s chances at winning a Cy Young Award to go with his four MVP trophies, and maybe one of each this year. It’s why we’ve heard talk of whether Roberts, the National League All-Star manager next month in Philadelphia, would start Ohtani or Yamamoto, and never mind that the Phillies’ Cristopher Sanchez or the Milwaukee Brewers’ hard-throwing Jacob Misiorowski are also legitimate candidates for that honor.
And when Ohtani has the rare hiccup, as was the case Wednesday, it’s news. Big news, especially in his home country.
He came into Wednesday’s game with a 6-2 record and 1.06 ERA in his previous 11 starts. He gave up three runs in 6⅔ innings last Wednesday in Pittsburgh, the night the Dodgers’ bullpen spit up a 6-1 lead in a 9-8 loss. The next night he tweaked his left knee, missed the first game of the White Sox series in Chicago, and was not the DH on Wednesday’s lineup card against the Rays, the idea being to reduce his workload just a bit.
Consider, too, that no one stirred in the Dodgers’ bullpen during that four-run fifth inning until it was almost over, when left-hander Jack Dreyer started throwing. And Ohtani went back out for the sixth and got the Rays in order, on a strikeout, two groundouts and 15 pitches.
Read more 15 countries in Kenya adopt the Mombasa Declaration to fight illegal fishing
“I thought the pitch count (77 pitches through five innings) was good,” Roberts said. “I thought about it, but just kind of talking to (pitching coach) Mark (Prior) and just watching Shohei, the stuff was still good. And just feeling like if we can get him through another inning, it would shorten who we need to use for the last three innings, and it worked out.”
Anyway, when you have a four-time MVP in your dugout, the temptation is too great to utilize him in every way possible. In the bottom of the sixth, after Freeman’s homer had given the Dodgers the lead and with Ohtani not yet having been replaced as a pitcher, Roberts sent him up to pinch-hit for Miguel Rojas, the day’s DH. It didn’t work out; Ohtani grounded to short on the first pitch, and that move meant the Dodgers went without the DH for the rest of the game.
But why wouldn’t you take that chance?
“I think that was more, he can hit a homer,” Roberts said. “I talked to him and he said he felt really comfortable about taking the at-bat. That was the only chance we would have to hit him, in that inning. And so I just felt like, use that bullet and then you still have (Max) Muncy and Wardo (Ryan Ward) later.”
Not taking his pitching turn, Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton, was never an option. The knee wasn’t an issue, he said, and the biggest irritant wasn’t anything physical but the leadoff walk he issued to Victor Mesa Jr. in that fifth inning. That was followed by a double to center by former Dodger prospect Hunter Feduccia to get the big inning started.
“There’s not a lot of situations where you feel 100%,” Ohtani said. “So I just took it as that. And it’s big that we were able to win a game like this. … Actually, I just felt good overall. It’s just really that inning, that fifth inning that I wasn’t really too pleased, but aside from that, the stuff was good and felt pretty good overall.”
As catcher Dalton Rushing put it, “He ran into a little trouble in the fifth, but I don’t think it was any worry with his stuff. That’s a pretty good offense. It knows how to put runs on the board. And that’s the offense we’re gonna face in October. So I think essentially he did his job.”
(Yes, that October reference might raise a few eyebrows throughout baseball. And while the Dodgers have earned the privilege of looking ahead a bit over the last few years, it’s probably best not to be blatant about it. Especially in mid-June, even with a nine-game division lead.)
“Obviously we expect close to perfection out of Sho every time he goes out there,” Rushing continued. “So does he (expect that) out of himself. But … whether we get hit around here, hit around there, I don’t think it’s anything to worry about.”
Read more Archaeology team unearths ‘prototype’ of world-famous Stonehenge monument just a few miles away