Shohei does damage, even when D-backs take bat out of his hands
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PHOENIX -- With one out and a runner on third base in the seventh inning of Tuesday night's 6-5 Dodgers victory, the D-backs wanted no part of Shohei Ohtani. So they held up four fingers and sent him straight to first base.
Ohtani is one of the most fearsome hitters in baseball, and as such, he's no stranger to taking intentional walks. But it had been a long time since an opposing team had opted to take the bat out of his hands like this -- 26 games, to be exact.
Even while Ohtani was entrenched in a slow start at the plate, his career track record was enough for pitchers to approach him with care. Now that Ohtani has rounded into form, he's being treated more like the most dangerous version of himself.
Ohtani, who already had a double and a two-run triple, did not get the chance to do further damage in the seventh inning. But because the D-backs put him on, he was able to score on a Mookie Betts RBI single, which gave the Dodgers a four-run lead at the time. But it ended up being the winning run after Arizona plated a trio of runs off L.A. relievers Kyle Hurt and Will Klein in the bottom half of the inning.
That's the thing about intentionally walking Ohtani: Even by neutralizing him, there are plenty of players behind him who should be just as capable of getting the job done.
Coming off a sluggish offensive performance in Monday's 4-1 loss, the Dodgers came out swinging the following evening. Ohtani lined a double to right field to lead off the contest, then came around to score one batter later on Freddie Freeman's ninth home run of the season.
In the second inning, Dalton Rushing and Alex Freeland set the table with back-to-back singles. Ohtani brought them both home with another line drive to right field, then slid safely into third base for his second triple of the season.
Since May 12 -- one day before he did not hit in back-to-back games as an opportunity to reset -- Ohtani is 29-for-69 (.420), with 13 of those hits going for extra bases. In the 38 games he hit in before then, Ohtani had gone 34-for-146 (.233), also with 13 extra-base hits.