Shohei Ohtani will not be in Philadelphia on July 14. The Dodgers superstar is officially out of the 2026 All-Star Game with a knee injury he says he has been managing all season long.
Ohtani was voted the National League starting designated hitter by the fans. That vote was a formality. He is the best player in baseball. But he will be watching this one from home while the Dodgers get some clarity on how bad his knee actually is.
The news dropped Saturday and it lines up with everything we have been watching from Ohtani for weeks. He has looked slightly off at the plate compared to his usual video game numbers. His pitching has been managed more carefully than fans wanted to admit. Now we know why.
According to reports, Ohtani finally sat down with the Dodgers medical staff and shared the full picture of what he has been dealing with. The team was already being cautious with his two-way workload. That caution is about to look a lot more strict.
This is the right call for Los Angeles. Full stop.
Ohtani is 31 years old. He is coming off major elbow surgery. He is doing something no player in modern baseball has done, hitting like an MVP and pitching like an ace in the same season. The idea that he should fly across the country for an exhibition game while nursing a knee issue is absurd. The second half matters. October matters. Philadelphia in July does not.
The Dodgers have been managing his innings on the mound carefully all season, and now the knee gives them another reason to protect him. A DH does not need to be running the bases hard in a made for TV event. He needs to be right for August, September and the playoff push.
Fans in Philadelphia are going to be crushed. They lost Bryce Harper to injury for parts of the season, and now the biggest draw in the sport is out too. That is a tough double punch for the host city. The All-Star Game sells itself when Ohtani is playing. Without him, the star power in the National League lineup takes a real hit.
The bigger question is what this means for his pitching schedule down the stretch. If the knee is bad enough to shut him down for an exhibition, is it bad enough to affect his push off the mound? That is what Dave Roberts and the Dodgers training staff have to figure out over the break.
Los Angeles has a comfortable spot in the NL West but they cannot afford to lose Ohtani for any real stretch. Their rotation has been patched together for months. Their bullpen has been overworked. Ohtani is the entire margin between contending and dominating.
Expect the Dodgers to use the All-Star break as a mini reset for him. Rest the knee. Reevaluate the pitching workload. Come back in the second half with a plan that keeps him upright through October.
Ohtani sitting out the All-Star Game is not a crisis. It is the smartest move on the board. But the fact that he has been playing through something all year is a reminder that even the best player in the sport is human. Los Angeles needs to protect that investment.
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.
