Two-way star Shohei Ohtani had a shaky end to the season, both at the plate and on (or rather off) the mound. He batted just .160/.284/.253 with a 58 wRC+ in 88 plate appearances from August 18th onward. A left knee injury kept him from pitching since early July, and right biceps inflammation cropped up later on which forced him to the 15-day IL in September. With the Dodgers now eliminated from the postseason, the focus will shift to getting Ohtani healthy for 2027, and the 32-year-old tells Katie Woo of The Athletic that it’s “hard to tell” whether he’ll need knee or bicep surgery this offseason. Either way, he plans to pitch next season.
It’s entirely unsurprising given Ohtani’s continued dominance on the mound when healthy. He started 14 games this year and held opponents to a 1.79 ERA over 85 2/3 innings, posting a 27.9% strikeout rate, 7.6% walk rate, and 51.2% ground ball rate. The strikeout and walk metrics in particular were well above average. FanGraphs valued his pitching contributions at 2.9 wins above replacement, placing Ohtani in the top 20% of all pitchers with at least 80 innings. Almost everyone ahead of him threw 60-100 more innings.
As expected, Ohtani also dominated at the plate, even including the mid-August drop-off. He batted .275/.377/.512 overall with 30 home runs and tied for fifth-best in the Senior Circuit with a 139 wRC+. He was worth 3.7 fWAR for his hitting and 6.6 fWAR when you factor in his pitching. That won’t be enough to win the NL MVP, as that honor likely belongs to Pete Crow-Armstrong. Nonetheless, Ohtani was unquestionably still a Top 10 player in the game.
Unfortunately, Ohtani’s postseason performance was a continuation of his late-season slide. He came up to the plate 32 times between the Division and Championship Series and went 5-for-26 with ten strikeouts. Ohtani’s only extra base hit was a three-run homer yesterday which gave the Dodgers a 4-0 lead in the bottom of the second. He struck out in his other three at-bats. Having the four-time MVP at less than full strength didn’t help the team’s postseason performance. L.A. finished with a 63 wRC+ across both rounds.
Any serious injury to Ohtani is doubly impactful for the Dodgers, let alone two of them. Some portion of the fanbase might insist that he should eventually give up pitching to focus on hitting. That may happen one day, but there’s virtually no chance of it happening when Ohtani is still in the first half of his contract in L.A.
For their part, the Dodgers have always kept a close eye on Ohtani’s workload and are fully aware of the challenges of keeping a two-way player healthy. As president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said before the postseason, “What he’s doing is unprecedented, and it takes a real toll. It’s unprecedented for all of us, and we’re kind of feeling our way through it together” (link via Woo).
For now, the Dodgers will continue to monitor Ohtani’s health. If surgery becomes necessary, they will make every effort to ensure it doesn’t interfere with Ohtani’s readiness for 2027. In any case, the Dodgers put up a 111 wRC+ during the regular season (second-best in the Majors) and would be capable of withstanding an absence. Besides Ohtani, all five of L.A.’s other qualified hitters were average or better by wRC+ this year. They’ll all be back in 2027. The rotation, which may see Tarik Skubal depart in free agency, could arguably use Ohtani more. Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell were both effective on a rate basis but combined for just 116 2/3 regular-season innings. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was the Dodgers’ sole qualified starter.
Photo courtesy of Kirby Lee, Imagn Images