In the third year of what is supposed to be a 10-year partnership, the Los Angeles Dodgers must decide what to do with Shohei Ohtani.
There was nothing to do in 2024 and 2025. “Let him cook” was the vibe emanating from Chavez Ravine, and no one could argue with the results. A 50-50 season in one year. A 55-homer season, with elite pitchers alongside him. A World Series championship and an MVP award for both.
So it’s almost head-scratching to contemplate the ruins of 2026. There are the smoldering ruins of the Dodgers after a four-game sweep by the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS. And there’s Ohtani, who was too injured to do anything in the final two months of the season.
What happens next is hard to say. It depends on who learned what and with what intensity. Tough questions need to be asked, and they won’t be answered until someone blinks.
The Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani both own the 2026 failures
The “Let him cook” model has worked very well for Ohtani and the Dodgers for most of this season. He entered the All-Star break with a .953 OPS and 22 home runs as a hitter and a 1.79 ERA in 14 starts as a pitcher. He had a hand on his fifth MVP, which would have pushed him into territory previously known only to Barry Bonds.
Even then, there were quiet whispers of physical breakdown that gradually grew into a dull roar.
First, it was just his left knee. Next it was his right bicep. The launches stopped definitively on July 3. The strikes stopped on August 18, at least based on the results. He had a .949 OPS and 30 home runs that day. After that, a .530 OPS and no home runs. Even after Ohtani finally got the long ball back in Game 4 of the NLCS, he still left the playoffs with just a .630 OPS and a home run.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts may have intentionally lit the fire that sent that home run into the Los Angeles night. He had Ohtani floated to the bench for Game 3, then implied in Game 4 that Ohtani had been motivated by the resulting chatter. If that’s the case, Roberts clearly understands how to communicate with her famously non-communicative superstar.
However, Roberts and the Dodgers’ accusations of mismanagement are supported by too much evidence. It wasn’t until September 11 that the Dodgers finally placed Ohtani on the IL, where he remained for two weeks. He still wasn’t fully healthy at the start of the postseason, and he never looked that way during the Dodgers’ briefer-than-expected stay. He struck out 14 times in 30 at-bats, sometimes looking like he had never swung a bat before.
According to Katie Woo of AthleticsOhtani said Thursday it was “difficult to say” whether he would need surgery for his injuries. This is notably not an outright rejection of this possibility, and it should make the Dodgers cringe.
This fuels the idea that Ohtani was too injured to play all along. And with the next lockout, the player team will be closed. communication, the last thing they need this offseason is their $700 million unicorn recovering from surgery in a black box known only to him and his ilk. secret agent, Nez Balelo.
The Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani need to find a happy medium
Whatever happens to Ohtani this offseason, now is the perfect time to discuss whether his act as a two-way player has finally become too much for him to bear.
After all, he’s 32 years old and has already undergone two major surgeries on his right arm. Since it serves as both his landing leg when throwing and his back leg when striking, it cannot be overemphasized how Ohtani can’t move forward with a compromised left knee.
And yet he has already determined that there is no conversation to be had.
“Yeah, definitely,” Ohtani said when asked if he remains committed to pitching, according to Woo. He also added that he “hopes to have a better season next year.”
Even if the Dodgers aren’t ready to fight that, they have to be willing to let Ohtani run his own show in the middle of what should be a 26-man circus. And they just might be, if earlier quotes (presented by Woo) from Roberts and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman are any indication:
- Dave Roberts: “It’s different from any player, you could say, in any sport right now because he’s a global phenomenon. It’s definitely harder to deal with, and I have to be careful.”
- Andrew Friedman: “What he’s doing is unprecedented, and it’s very expensive. It’s unprecedented for all of us, and we’re kind of trying to get through this together.”
If the Dodgers can’t convince Ohtani to stop pitching, their options for managing his workload are ultimately limited. He’s already on a once-a-week schedule, and all but one of his 14 starts this year have come with six or more days off.
The only logical step is for the Dodgers to declare that Ohtani can’t have it both ways on the same day.
He may not like it, but there is strong evidence that it would be for the best. In games where he hits but doesn’t pitch, he has a career OPS of .951. In games where he does both, he has an OPS of .897. While his excellence as a pitcher is arguably worth the modest decline in his offense, that argument falls apart if the risk of injury increases. After 2026, the Dodgers just have to take this as the truth.
Somehow the Dodgers and Ohtani need to figure this out. Because barring a scenario in which Dodgers owner Mark Walter quickly sells the team and allows Ohtani to trigger an unusual opt-out clause, the two sides have seven more years together.
They can and should be seven great years, but only if 2026 is seen as a warning rather than a one-off year.
Gn headline
