LOS ANGELES–This time,\u00a0Shohei Ohtani\u00a0was just ordinary.<\/p>\n
A night after the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 two-way superstar treated baseball fans to one of the\u00a0greatest performances in World Series history, he looked just fine on the mound and struggled at the plate.<\/p>\n
Ohtani was tagged for four runs and six hits in the\u00a0Dodgers\u2019 6-2 loss\u00a0Tuesday night to the Toronto Blue Jays, who tied the best-of-seven Series at 2. He struck out six and walked one over six innings.<\/p>\n
After reaching base a record-tying nine times \u2014 including two homers and two doubles \u2014 in an 18-inning, 6-5 win in Game 3, Ohtani was hitless with two strikeouts and a walk. The three-time MVP went down swinging against Shane Bieber leading off the third, ending his on-base streak at 11.<\/p>\n
\u201cBieber pitched really well,\u201d Ohtani said through an interpreter. \u201cHe attacked really at the edge and was able to execute location-wise.\u201d<\/p>\n
His historic and exhausting performance Monday appeared to take a toll as Ohtani took the mound about 17 hours after saying he wanted to go to sleep as soon as possible. He said he was in bed by about 2 a.m. and felt rested enough for Game 4.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was able to get on the mound in pretty good condition,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Catcher Will Smith didn\u2019t detect any fatigue from Ohtani.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s got a really good idea of what he\u2019s doing on the mound,\u201d Smith said. \u201cGoes in with a really clear plan and has a really good feel out there. He was making good pitches out there. I thought he looked really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ohtani gave up his first homer of the postseason \u2014\u00a0a two-run shot by Vladimir Guerrero Jr.\u00a0on an 85 mph sweeper \u2014 that put the Blue Jays ahead 2-1 in the third.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter last night and kind of all the recognition that went into Shohei individually and he\u2019s on the mound today, it\u2019s a huge swing from Vlad,\u201d Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. \u201cIt\u2019s a huge swing to get us going.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ohtani retired the side in the second and sixth. In between, he struck out the side in the fourth.<\/p>\n
The Blue Jays broke the game open in a four-run seventh. Their first two runs were charged to Ohtani, who had already left the game. He was disappointed he couldn\u2019t pitch deeper into the game a day after LA leaned hard on its bullpen.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhether it\u2019s during the regular season or the postseason, my goal is to be able to pitch six innings, and the situation, this game, I wanted to go seven,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it was regrettable that I wasn\u2019t able to finish that inning.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dodgers had six hits and never landed a big blow behind Ohtani.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gave us chances,\u201d shortstop Mookie Betts said. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t come through offensively.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES–This time,\u00a0Shohei Ohtani\u00a0was just ordinary. A night after the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 two-way superstar treated baseball fans…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248120,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[78971,64,63,941,591,44,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-248119","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-asahi-shimbun","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-japan","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-news","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248119"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248119\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}