From our other sites
The story
Dodgers-focused outlet “Dodgers Digest” published a piece on August 31 addressing the timing of Shohei Ohtani’s stint on the injured list (IL). Since hitting his 30th home run against the Rockies on August 18, Ohtani has gone homerless in 10 games and 50 plate appearances, batting a brutal .116 (5-for-43) with zero RBIs. With his return to pitching now up in the air due to the state of his left knee and biceps, some see a link between the strain of resuming throwing and his batting slump. On the 5channel sports-tabloid board Geinou/Sports Sokuhou+, commenters split between those pointing to fatigue from continuing two-way play and those bluntly chalking it up to decline.
[Dodgers] Shohei Ohtani Homerless in 10 Games, Batting .116 — With Pitching Return Up in the Air, “When’s He Going on the IL?” Asks US Report
Dodgers-focused outlet “Dodgers Digest” published an article on the 31st (September 1 Japan time) about Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani (32) titled “When Will the Dodgers Convince Shohei Ohtani to Go on the Injured List (IL)?”
With his return to the mound shelved out of consideration for the state of his left knee and biceps, Ohtani hit his 30th home run in his second at-bat against the Rockies on the 18th (19th Japan time), but has gone completely dry since — homerless in 10 games and 50 plate appearances, batting just .116 (5-for-43) with zero RBIs. The toll of his throwing program is being cited as a possible cause.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Understand that it's not something you do if you don't want to shorten a guy's baseball career.
Back in the day when Choo Shin-soo used to lord it over Matsui, Matsui had only cleared 30 homers once in his whole career.
Dragging in a mountain of sponsors is part of his value too, sure.
But if this keeps up, he could at least start playing defense.
Is there even such a thing as pressure in that soft league?
Well, the money will keep rolling in for years regardless.
Going on the IL when he's not even injured?
I think he still had one more kid on there.
First he's gotta learn to actually speak English lol
That owner's probably done paying his salary at this point.
Wasn't the plan to go home and become a manager? Knowing how this goes, he won't even come back to Japan, let alone his hometown — he'll just settle in America for good.
No wonder the team's being forced into a sale.
Even elite players tend to retire by their mid-30s.
Hideki Matsui left the Yankees at 35, drifted around for a few years, then retired.
Ohtani's 32 now, and he's been run into the ground with this whole two-way thing, so of course he's falling apart. This should've been predictable all along.
The yakiton were just too dumb to see it coming. (焼き豚, derogatory slang for obsessive baseball fanboys)
As long as he keeps doing two-way, he has to accept that a mid-season break and comeback come as a package deal, and actually let it heal properly.
Re: #33
What's the official story on where Ohtani's hurt right now?
There's no way an idiot would go out of his way to steal a base with a bad knee, right?
They're dominating MLB and they're a popular team,
stacked with stars like Ohtani and they just landed Skubal too,
so why the sale?
Owner scandal. He's under scrutiny from the FBI and federal prosecutors over financial dealings.
American pro leagues hate legal risk attached to an owner because it damages the league's image and brand.
Nobody's interested in the sport anymore.
Even if they tried to manufacture a new star from scratch now, it'd take ten years.
And it took over ten years of hyping Ohtani up to turn him into a star in the first place.
That fortune's about to disappear though lol
Hurry up and let Ohtani crush a "ho-mu-ra-n" already (the original spells out "home run" with broken-up characters, likely to dodge a word filter)
He might be in worse shape than anyone imagined.
Ohtani sleeps more than 10 hours a day.
That's because he's pushing his body to an abnormal degree.
The truth is he needs over 10 hours of sleep just to hold up.
A 20-something Ohtani could still take that kind of strain.
But a 32-year-old Ohtani can't.
Two-way baseball is something only a guy in his 20s could pull off — really, nobody else can do it at all — and he shouldn't keep clinging to it.
Even Babe Ruth gave it up. It's about time Ohtani learned that lesson the hard way.
Background and Talking Points
Going on the IL (injured list) doesn’t necessarily mean a serious injury — teams often use it strategically late in the season to get a player back into shape, and the US media report was framed with that in mind. Ohtani underwent right elbow surgery in 2023, and concerns that balancing pitching and hitting as a two-way player is piling extra strain on his body have been raised before. In the thread, opinion split between the view that “the load of resuming pitching is dragging down his hitting” and the view that “this is just age-appropriate decline for a 32-year-old,” with comparisons drawn to the late careers of Hideki Matsui and Ichiro. That said, a .116 batting average alone can’t settle the question of whether two-way play still makes sense or what comes next — it’s worth keeping the recent 10-game slump separate from any long-term read on his ability, and that distinction was kept in mind in putting this piece together.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5channel (Geinou/Sports Sokuhou+) thread “[MLB] Shohei Ohtani Homerless in 10 Games, Batting .116, Pitching Return Up in the Air — “When’s He Going on the IL?” Asks US Report.”
Leave a Reply