LOS ANGELES -- Shohei Ohtani has been on quite the roll on the mound, but the same has not been true at the plate.
For the third straight start, Ohtani is likely not to hit when he pitches against the Giants (7:10 p.m. PT on SportsNet LA and MLB.TV) on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, manager Dave Roberts said. Ohtani will also be out of the starting lineup -- but available to pinch-hit in a meaningful situation -- in Thursday's series finale.
Among starting pitchers who have pitched at least 30 innings, Ohtani leads the Majors with a 0.97 ERA. But he has yet to get going as a hitter, entering Tuesday with a .767 OPS.
"It’s just more thinking that it might just be a good thing to take a little bit of a load off his plate offensively," Roberts said. "But I haven’t made that decision. Maybe some of it is affected by tonight. But like I said, I’m probably leaning toward not having him hit for the next two days.”
While Ohtani has scuffled as a hitter, he has excelled as a pitcher. He's coming off striking out eight batters across a season-high seven innings last Tuesday against the Astros, although he did allow more than one earned run for the first time this season on the first two homers he's surrendered this year, both solo shots.
Ohtani has thrived on the mound, but the Dodgers have not turned many of his starts into team victories. L.A. is 2-4 when Ohtani starts this year, has lost 13 of his last 18 outings dating back to last season.
Last year, Ohtani's return to pitching following a lengthy rehab from a second major surgery on his right elbow largely coincided with a team-wide offensive swoon that stretched from July to early September. The Dodgers have been in a similar spot over the past three weeks, having been held to four runs or fewer in 14 of 19 games entering Tuesday.
With Ohtani on the mound, the Dodgers have scored an average of 2.9 runs per game. He and Yoshinobu Yamamoto (4.3) are the only L.A. starters who have received less than the league average (4.6) in run support.
In half of his pitching starts, Ohtani has not had the opportunity to provide his own run support, as he is accustomed to. But with Ohtani searching at the plate for the time being, the Dodgers feel that it is prudent to allow him to solely focus on pitching and plug another hitter in as the DH.
The Dodgers are hopeful that once Ohtani's swing is in a better place, he'll be able to carry out his full two-way workload as he would like to. While he works to get back to being the hitter he's capable of being, the team is leaning toward keeping his workloads separate to improve the quality of the whole.
"I think in this particular case, it’s the load of thinking about the pitching, which he’s used to, but also the load on the pitching side as far as the tax on the body," Roberts said. "So I think that giving him one day for sure, potentially two days, to reset the body, the mind -- there’s only upside.”