Shohei Ohtani Just Did Something No Pitcher Has Done Since 2015: Six Hitless Innings and a Home Run
Shohei Ohtani had another one of those nights that makes you question whether he is operating under the same rules as the rest of baseball.
The Dodgers two-way star threw six hitless innings against the Rockies, hit a leadoff home run to open the scoring, and walked off the mound as the Dodgers completed a series sweep with a 4-1 win. That makes him the first pitcher since 2015 to both hit a home run and pitch six hitless innings in the same game. The last Dodgers pitcher to do it was Don Drysdale, in 1959.
Let those names sink in. Drysdale is a Hall of Famer. The last guy to pull this off in any uniform was a decade ago. This is not a fun statistical fluke. This is a historic kind of dual performance, and Ohtani made it look casual.
The pitching line is the more remarkable half. Ohtani has been ramping back to the mound since his elbow surgery, and his velocity is back. He sat at 98-100 against Colorado and dialed up a 102 in the fifth inning. His slider had legitimate two-plane break. His splitter was unhittable. The Rockies are not a juggernaut lineup, but six no-hit innings is six no-hit innings, and Ohtani did it while throwing fewer than 90 pitches.
The home run was the kind of leadoff blast that sets a tone. Ohtani jumped on the first fastball he saw, drove it 432 feet to right-center, and trotted around the bases before the Dodgers had even sat down on the bench. It was his 18th of the season, which is on a 50-homer pace for a season where he is also making 25 starts on the mound.
The cumulative line is starting to look like another MVP season. Ohtani is hitting .305 with the 18 homers and 14 stolen bases. He has a 2.10 ERA in 11 starts. His WAR is already in the high single digits with four months still to play. Nobody else in baseball is in this conversation.
The Dodgers are obviously the beneficiaries of all of this. They are 38-22, leading the National League West, and looking like a legitimate threat to win their third consecutive World Series. Their starting rotation has been a mess of injuries all year, but Ohtani’s return to the mound has stabilized everything. The bullpen is rested. The lineup is deep. They are the team to beat.
The Rockies sweep was just the Dodgers handling business, but it is going to give Roki Sasaki and Yoshinobu Yamamoto a confidence boost as they continue their own rehabs. Ohtani sets the tone, the rest of the rotation follows.
The bigger question is whether Ohtani can sustain this workload. The double duty was always going to be the issue once he came back from surgery. The Dodgers have been careful with his innings count. They have him on a six-day rotation when possible. They are managing his bat-to-bat workload on his start days. The plan has been to keep him fresh for September and October.
If he sustains this pace, the Dodgers are going to lock up the division by mid-August and have the time to set up their pitching rotation exactly how they want it for the postseason. That is the kind of luxury most teams cannot dream of.
For Ohtani himself, the bigger picture is what this means for his historical place. He already has a unanimous MVP and a World Series ring. He is now demonstrating that the surgery did not slow him down. He is on a path that has no real precedent in modern baseball. He is going to keep doing things nobody has done in 60 or 70 years.
The Drysdale comparison is fun. The next comparison is going to be even more interesting. Because at the rate Ohtani is going, he might end up being the only meaningful comparison for himself.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.
