Ohtani to make 2026 pitching debut on Tuesday (7 p.m. PT)

LOS ANGELES -- The greatest show in baseball is nearly upon us.

For the first time this season, Shohei Ohtani will carry out his full two-way duties during Tuesday night's game against the Guardians, when he'll make his pitching debut. First pitch is set for 7:10 p.m. PT/10:10 p.m. ET at Dodger Stadium. With Roki Sasaki starting on Monday and Yoshinobu Yamamoto following Ohtani on Wednesday, this will be the first time in Major League history that a team starts a Japanese-born pitcher in three straight games, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

For most of Spring Training, the Dodgers were unsure how much they would be able to get out of Ohtani as a pitcher to begin the season. Ohtani spent the majority of camp away from the team while playing in the World Baseball Classic, where he was exclusively used as a hitter. Ohtani continued to build up his arm by throwing bullpen sessions and facing hitters, and he returned to the Dodgers earlier than expected after Samurai Japan was eliminated by Venezuela in the quarterfinal round.

That allowed Ohtani to make two spring starts for the Dodgers, one in the Cactus League and one during last week's Freeway Series exhibitions. That ensured that Ohtani is essentially built up for full starts from the beginning, rather than opening the season as more of a multi-inning opener.

Ohtani pitched 4 1/3 scoreless innings against the Giants on March 18 and struck out 11 Angels before being capped at four-plus innings due to an elevated pitch count on March 24. On Tuesday, manager Dave Roberts expects Ohtani to pitch around six innings, but that's not a hard upper limit.

"Honestly, with Shohei, you've got to be willing to adapt," Roberts said. "Because if he's really efficient, then you're still trying to win the game. And if it makes sense, I'm not going to just pull the plug just because of a certain number."

Last year, Ohtani went 1-1 with a 2.87 ERA in his long-awaited return to pitching following a second major surgery on his right elbow. He threw only 47 innings across 14 starts because he was still essentially rehabbing at the big league level early on, building up one inning at a time. The Dodgers will likely need to monitor his workload to an extent in his first full pitching season since 2023, but it will be a fluid situation that requires plenty of communication between Ohtani and the team's coaches and trainers, similarly to how his rehab played out last year.

"It's just not an exact science," Roberts said. "Innings aren't all created equal. All throws aren't created equal. We talked to him a lot on how he's feeling, and if there's days that we got to kind of give him a couple extra days, we're willing to do that."