Shohei Ohtani Out of Dodgers Lineup With Knee Discomfort: Should Los Angeles Be Worried?
Shohei Ohtani sat out of the Dodgers lineup Thursday, and Los Angeles is officially in cautious mode with the two-way superstar.
Manager Dave Roberts said the decision to rest Ohtani was tied to lingering soreness in his left knee. Ohtani has been dealing with knee discomfort for weeks now, along with a bicep issue that has kept him from pitching since July 3. The medical staff is trying to keep everything from becoming something bigger.
“It’s a day-to-day thing,” Roberts told reporters. Treatment has been ongoing, and the Dodgers decided a day off was the safest move.
That kind of language is not what fans want to hear at the end of July. The trade deadline is on August 3, the playoff race is officially in full swing, and the biggest star in baseball is dealing with a body that is not fully cooperating.
Ohtani has actually been feeling better since the pitching break. He received an injection in the knee weeks ago, and rest has helped. But the issue keeps popping up, which is what makes this concerning. Chronic soreness in a knee for a player who runs the bases hard and plays two-way baseball is not something that just goes away.
The Dodgers have handled Ohtani’s workload carefully all season. He was managing both the pitching side of his game and the hitting side, which is essentially two full-time jobs in one. Even for someone as historically unique as Ohtani, that grind wears the body down over 162 games plus playoffs.
Shutting him down from pitching entirely for the second half of the season was probably the right call. It let his arm recover from the workload and preserved him for the postseason as a hitter. That decision looks even smarter now that the knee is acting up. Ohtani cannot be dealing with three body issues heading into October.
The good news is that Ohtani has still been productive as a designated hitter. He is putting up MVP numbers with the bat even without pitching. His at-bats are still must-watch. His impact on the lineup is still enormous.
The bigger concern is what happens if the knee issue lingers into the playoffs. Ohtani cannot afford to be at less than 100 percent when the games matter most. The Dodgers built this team around him and Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts. They need all three healthy and firing to win a title.
Roberts has been managing star durability all season. Betts has dealt with multiple minor issues. Freeman has been playing through discomfort. Ohtani is now on that list too. This is what happens when you build a team of elite veterans. Bodies break down.
The trade deadline conversation gets more interesting with this news. Los Angeles has been aggressive in pursuing Tarik Skubal and other top-tier starting pitchers. They also need to be thinking about lineup depth. If Ohtani misses time in October, having another legitimate bat in the lineup becomes critical.
Andrew Friedman is the best executive in baseball, and he will not overreact to a single day of rest. But the front office has to be planning for a worst-case scenario now. What does the roster look like if Ohtani is limited in October? Who fills that hole? Do you spend a top prospect on a bat instead of an arm?
Those are hard questions the Dodgers front office should be asking. Ohtani himself said the day off was just a precaution, and he expects to be in the lineup again soon. Los Angeles fans will not exhale until they see him back on the field.
The next few weeks are going to be very carefully monitored.
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.
