Shohei Ohtani Is Hurt, Out Of The Lineup, And May Be Headed To The IL

Shohei Ohtani finds himself on the bench and eating sunflower seeds rather than on the field and hitting homers. (Photo by Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Getty Images)

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Something isn’t right with Shohei Ohtani. It has been obvious to Dodgers fans for a couple of weeks, and is finally became apparent to the team. So, for the last four nights, Ohtani has found himself on the bench, resting his injured left knee and balky right biceps. The team is now considering whether or not to put him on the injured list.

Both of these injuries have kept Ohtani off the mound since July 3rd. But, for a while, the maladies did not truly affect his offense. In fact, in the first 35 games after his last pitching appearance, Ohtani slashed .309/.366/.626, with eleven home runs and nine doubles.

But since the day he hit two home runs in Denver against the Rockies — a run of 13 games — he is slashing a mere .137/.290/.255, with one double, triple, and homer. And on Wednesday night against the Cardinals, he struck out four times. That brought his batting average down to .279, his lowest mark since May 30th. But it was not just the four punch outs, it was how he looked in those at-bats. Ohtani, who typically unleashes ferocious swings, matching power with power, looked overmatched and out of sorts. He looked diminished, off-balance, and considerably less than 100%.

Last month Ohtani started a throwing program to get him back on the mound as soon as possible. After a handful of good bullpen sessions, the pain in the right knee raised its head again, and Los Angeles was forced to shut down their two-way star. While in Detroit last week, manager Dave Roberts stated that “if any pitcher was feeling like this, we wouldn’t run him out there,” so neither will his $700 million star.

But there was hope that once the thought of (and thus the training necessary to) pitching again was off the table, Shohei would get back in the groove in the batter’s box. Unfortunately for the Dodgers, whose offense has been in a funk for more than a month, that has not been the case. He has two singles since that time, one at 66-mph and one at 78-mph — a far cry from the 100-mph+ that fans have become accustomed to from the slugger (according to Savant, his 93.2-mph average exit velocity is in the 97th percentile).

Roberts has given Ohtani a long weekend off, starting with Thursday night through Sunday. The manager said he is “hopeful, but I wouldn’t say confident,” that a trip the injured list is in Ohtani’s future. The idea is to give him some rest and reassess in a few days. And, according to Maddie Lee of the Los Angeles Times:

The Dodgers clearly need the four-time MVP in the lineup, and need him hitting like the player of old. The team’s offense has been in a prolonged slump, although they have scored at least five runs in five of their last six games. However, on Thursday night, they needed a two-out, two-run double from Teoscar Hernández in the bottom of the ninth to push across just their second and third runs of the night.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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