SAN FRANCISCO — Heliot Ramos was never a pitcher when he was growing up, but if he had the skill set to be a two-way player, he knows which direction he would choose. 

“If I was him,” he said of Shohei Ohtani, “I would hit.”

Ramos pointed out that Ohtani seems to be the same guy every night at the plate. Even his outs look hard, and he’s a threat to go deep every time he digs into the dirt. As a pitcher, Ramos said, you can have the occasional bad day. Saturday did not qualify for Ohtani. 

The game’s best player had his longest start since coming back from right elbow surgery, allowing just one hit in three innings to get the Dodgers going in a game they would win 2-1. Ohtani already has made an impact on this rivalry as a hitter, but Saturday was his first time facing the Giants as a pitcher for the Dodgers, and he certainly embraced the moment. Ohtani struck out the side in the first inning, hitting 100 mph. 

“He was attacking everybody, he has a good fastball,” Ramos said. “He looked pretty good today.”

The problem for the Giants was not that Ohtani dominated. They kind of figured that was coming, but their hope was that they could at least get his pitch count up and get him out of the game relatively early. Instead, Ohtani got through the first two innings on 23 pitches, which allowed him to go out for the third for the first time since his surgery. 

The bigger problem was that the Giants then did just about nothing against righty Emmet Sheehan, who took over in the fourth. Their lone run came in the eighth, when they had the bases loaded with one out. Rafael Devers hit a sacrifice fly but Matt Chapman grounded out. 

That wasted a strong performance by Landen Roupp, who got shelled at Dodger Stadium last month. Roupp never even pulled up the video of that game to review what went wrong. He was ready to move on, and on Saturday he allowed two runs over six. 

“I just had full control of everything,” he said. “Last outing there at Dodger Stadium, I just didn’t have a feel for anything. Today that was different and I was able to get through six.”

Roupp was on the mound well after Ohtani walked off, but that didn’t mean he was done with him. He got Ohtani to roll over twice on curveballs early in the game and then struck him out with a nasty sinker in the fifth, two innings after Ohtani had finished pitching. 

“I didn’t want to go back to [the curveball] because I figured he was looking for it,” Roupp said. “I stayed hard there and put a pitch at the top of the zone and got the call.”

Roupp finished the first half with a 3.27 ERA. He has given the Giants a reliable third option, and he said he’s looking forward to getting back home to North Carolina next week and doing some hunting.

Ohtani is also headed to the South, but he’ll be in Atlanta at the 2025 MLB All-Star Game. Through two games of this series, he has shown every bit of why he’s a perennial All-Star. A day after hitting a ball into McCovey Cove, he struck out four Giants. 

“It was crazy,” Roupp said. “Going into today, I was kind of shocked he was still leading off just because you have to throw your pregame bullpen, but he does it so well.”

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