6 increasingly unhinged ways to use Ohtani in playoffs

The Dodgers are in the postseason, once again. They’ll have Shohei Ohtani atop the lineup, once again. But: How will they use him? In what role? Or roles? Baseball’s most interesting man – and only official “two-way player” – offers so many options for Dave Roberts to choose from, now that he’s back to pitching and hitting at a high level.

Last October, recovering from Tommy John surgery that kept him off the mound all season, it was a whole lot simpler. The Dodgers played 16 postseason games, and Ohtani was the designated hitter for all 16 of them, playing through a left shoulder injury suffered late in Game 2 of the World Series. There wasn’t much to think through. Given their massive rotation problems, they could have used him, and the thought came up, but it ultimately never came to fruition.

This year is different, in every way. Ohtani is back on the mound, and he’s pitching at a high level, but also the Dodgers staff has flipped entirely from last year, to the point that now they have a healthy, deep, excellent rotation – and a problematic bullpen that could single-handedly cost them a deep postseason run. Given that the Angels never once made the postseason with Ohtani on the roster, this is a first all around. We've never seen a healthy, two-way Ohtani in October.

When you have a player who can do so many different things, you have to at least consider which ones might play out. Let’s dig through them all, ranked from "tamest" to "wildest." (Very, very wild.) We’re not saying these are realistic, because they aren’t – but they’re all allowed. We think.

1. He’s just the designated hitter and never pitches.

We have to at least start here, because this is what he did last October, and what he’s done in the majority of his games this season. Entering play on Wednesday, Ohtani has done this (meaning DH only, not DH in a game he also pitched in) 142 times this year. No one in the Majors has taken more DH plate appearances. Given the current strength of the Dodger rotation – Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Blake Snell would seem to be assured postseason starting roles, and Tyler Glasnow and Emmet Sheehan have both been strong options too, and, oh yes, Clayton Kershaw is still around for one last run – you don’t have to force Ohtani into the rotation, unlike last year.

Simple. Easy. Reliable.

Boring.

This, quite obviously, is not going to happen, aside from when he’s resting from just having pitched. In his last four pitching outings, Ohtani has thrown 19 2/3 innings. He’s allowed one run and struck out 27. He’s either the best pitcher the Dodgers have, or he’s tied with Yamamoto for that title. The odds of the Dodgers choosing not to deploy that kind of weapon on the mound in October are roughly equivalent to the odds that Kershaw starts his final game behind the plate.

2. He’s the starting pitcher, and then remains in the game as designated hitter.

This is exactly what Ohtani has been doing for months since his return to the mound on June 16. Due to the 2022 rule change that coincided with the designated hitter coming to both leagues, a player who is in the starting lineup as both the pitcher and the DH can remain in the game to hit after being removed on the mound, which is exactly what Ohtani has been doing.

This is, by far, the most likely outcome, in no small part due to the familiarity of it; we’ve seen it happen 14 times this season. That’s especially true because not only is Ohtani likely to start a postseason game, he’s lined up to start Game 1 of the Wild Card Series on Tuesday, given the full six days off after his last start in Arizona on Sept. 23.

The primary issue here is that assuming Yamamoto and Snell are also starting, then Glasnow would have to be either unavailable or used as a reliever – a role he hasn’t attempted since 2018. But that’s “a good problem to have,” so far as these things go, and Glasnow or Sheehan could easily be queued up to work in a tandem role, entering to start a clean inning even if a reliever has to come in for a quick out should Ohtani leave mid-inning. (We’ve seen Sheehan do this twice, on July 12 and July 30.)

So yes, it’s probably going to look like this, the most expected outcome, where Ohtani starts and hits when he can, and is DH only in between his starts.

But we didn’t come here for “the expected outcome,” did we? We did not. There are so many other ways this could go. It’s about to get weird.

3. He’s the designated hitter, and then enters in relief.

This has been bandied about, and the appeal is obvious, in that the Dodger rotation is very good and overstuffed, while the bullpen is desperate for any help it can find. You could use Glasnow as the third starter, and then should you progress to a longer series, use Sheehan or Kershaw as the fourth starter. You might remember how cool it was to see Ohtani enter in the ninth inning of the 2023 World Baseball Classic final to strike out then-teammate Mike Trout and win the title for Team Japan. Imagine that feeling in a playoff game in front of the home crowd.

It’s at least within the realm of possibility. Then again, that WBC appearance was the only time Ohtani has entered in relief in his North American career. The logistics of it get tricky – what if he’s scheduled to hit when he’s needing to be in the bullpen warming up? – and you’re also exchanging the potential of "many innings," as a starter, for "one," as a closer. You’re also risking losing hitter Ohtani should he enter and fail to end the game, because the DH would be lost once he’s removed. (The 2022 rule change applies only to being in the starting lineup as both pitcher and DH, not at any point in the game.)

It’s possible, also, that if this isn’t how October starts, it’s how it ends.

"Could it change down the road in the postseason? Possibly," Roberts said on Sept. 16. "But right now, we see him as a starter.”

Either way, you’d think if they were really keeping this option on the table, they’d have tried it at least once in the regular season. They have not. It’s probably not worth the trouble.

Fun idea! Probably not going to happen. But it’s at least possible, which is maybe more than we can say for our last two premises …

4. He’s the DH, then a relief pitcher, and then moves to the outfield.

Look, don’t blame us for this one. Ohtani openly talked about having “had different conversations with different people, and of course that’s come up,” with “that” being, well, this.

“As a player, if I’m told to go somewhere, I want to be prepared to do so,” Ohtani recently said. “That’s on the mound and perhaps even in the outfield.”

It’s not unprecedented. Back in 2021 for the Angels, Ohtani made seven appearances in the outfield, mostly because the rules at the time wouldn’t allow him to remain in the game as DH after leaving the mound as a pitcher. Last spring, as he entered his first year with the Dodgers knowing that he would not be able to pitch, there was at least some discussion that he could play outfield later in the year, once his arm was healed enough to do so.

That never happened, and the need to find a way to keep him in the lineup after pitching isn’t an issue today, given the rule change since he last did it in 2021. That means that this only applies if he’s used in relief and doesn’t finish the game on the mound – all of which seems like a pretty narrow window.

5. He’s the starting pitcher. And the designated hitter. And also the closer.

OK, here it is. This is the fun one. Consider this, all within the allowed rules of the game:

• Step 1: Ohtani starts as the DH and starting pitcher. That’s the easy part. This is nearly guaranteed to happen on his start days, like Game 1 of the Wild Card Series.

• Step 2: After a few innings on the mound, he departs for a reliever and remains as the DH. Also nearly guaranteed. This has happened each and every time he’s pitched this season.

• Step 3: It’s the ninth inning. Ohtani returns to the mound to finish it out. Oh, boy.

Imagine the drama. Let’s say, hypothetically, there’s a game where Ohtani starts and pitches excellently, perhaps throwing six shutout innings, leaving the mound (and remaining as DH) with the lead. Then, again hypothetically, consider if the ineffective bullpen chipped away at that lead, leaving the Dodgers entering the ninth inning with a 4-3 lead. What would Roberts do?

Enough with the hypotheticals: This is exactly what happened when Ohtani started against Arizona on Tuesday night. After Alex Vesia held the D-backs scoreless in the eighth, Roberts waved in Tanner Scott, despite his season-long struggles. Scott faced five hitters and retired just one. The Dodgers lost, 5-4. It was the seventh consecutive team loss racked up by a reliever.

Consider the alternative. Vesia had been used. Jack Dreyer had been used. Blake Treinen has been nearly as ineffective as Scott. Kirby Yates is not in the circle of trust. Imagine the lights going down as the ninth inning starts, as the new pitcher enters not from the bullpen, but from the dugout. (Or fine, maybe he’d have snuck back there for a few re-warm-ups, but go with us here.)

It’s true that this would cost the Dodgers the DH. It’s also true that should not be an impediment toward one of the truly manic possibilities in the game’s history – especially since this would only happen if the Dodgers had a lead and three outs left to close out the game anyway.

Now you’re wondering: Has this ever happened before? Maybe not exactly like this, given the DH aspect of it, but it's not exactly unheard of for a pitcher to start a game, finish a game, and not throw a complete game, either. (Sam McDowell, in this example, moved to first base.)

That scenario -- the starter begins and ends the game but doesn't throw every pitch -- has happened just six times in history. It happened twice with McDowell in 1970, the last time we've seen it.

It's one of a few such examples through history – though almost always just for a batter or two, not several innings.

One notable recent example: In a July 2009 game, lefty Sean Marshall entered in the ninth inning to face one batter, moved to left field while righty Aaron Heilman came in for one batter, then Marshall returned to finish the inning. This was before the three-batter minimum, but the premise stands. You can look at the wild 1986 game where the Mets, having lost several position players to ejection, had lefty Jesse Orosco and righty Roger McDowell swapping between the mound and corner outfield over the course of five extra innings; you can look at the 2016 game when Giants righty Cory Gearrin found himself in left field in between facing hitters, or the 1987 game when Giants lefty Keith Comstock was in an identical situation.

There’s even one notable game, in 2012, where both designated hitters (Baltimore’s Chris Davis, and Boston’s Darnell McDonald, who pinch-ran for original DH David Ortiz) found themselves moving from DH to the mound. (Davis, infamously, even got the win.)

It takes some weird situations. That’s what we’re looking for. Of course, if we’re going that far, we have to at least go one further.

6. He’s the starting pitcher. And the designated hitter. And also the closer. And then an outfielder.

Take everything we just went through above. Now, toss in “the game doesn’t end,” either because Ohtani blew the lead or the Dodgers were on the road and tied it in the bottom of the ninth. Removing Ohtani, the reliever, from the mound would cost the Dodgers the use of the DH. Maybe it would be that simple. Maybe he’d have given more than enough to his team for the day. Give the man a breather. Use a pinch-hitter the next time the DH spot comes up.

… but where’s the fun in that?

You can imagine that if you’re in extra innings, every single plate appearance is as important as it can be – and the dropoff from Ohtani to a pinch-hitter – or in the worst-case scenario, should the bench be emptied, a different pitcher hitting for himself – would be massive. You’d be desperate to keep Ohtani’s bat in the lineup, but he’s no longer pitching, and no longer eligible to be the designated hitter.

You do the only thing available to you. You do the thing he already mentioned just this month: You send him to the outfield. After he started. And hit. And relieved. You put him in left or right field. If we’re really getting greedy, maybe he’d even make a nice catch out there. Or take advantage of that one extra plate appearance to do something massive.

It’s so, so unlikely that most of this happens. But it’s not impossible, either. With Ohtani, very few things are.