LOS ANGELES \u2013 Shohei Ohtani was held out of the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 lineup on Thursday because of lingering discomfort in his left knee, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.<\/p>\n
The two-way star has been battling inflammation and soreness in the knee for weeks and skipped the Major League Baseball All-Star Game to receive treatment and rest.<\/p>\n
He had remained in the Dodgers\u2019 batting lineup, however, with the team saying the knee was only a problem when he pitches.<\/p>\n
Ohtani hasn\u2019t pitched in a game since July 3, and this week he postponed a planned bullpen throwing session over what Roberts called \u201cregression\u201d of the knee injury.<\/p>\n
Roberts insisted before Thursday\u2019s game against the Seattle Mariners that he didn\u2019t think the problem would keep Ohtani from his hitting duties long-term.<\/p>\n
\u201cI expected him to play,\u201d Roberts said, adding that he was \u201cvery confident\u201d that Ohtani would be back in the lineup on Friday.<\/p>\n
Roberts, who added that Ohtani\u00a0being\u00a0on base seven times over the previous two nights could have possibly contributed to the soreness, said it seemed too soon to consider putting Ohtani on the injured list and sidelining him for more than a week.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a hard question and I understand the thought behind it. But it\u2019s gotten better over the last few weeks, markedly,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cHe\u2019s been a very productive player …You trust him. He feels like he can go.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s not 100%. Very few players are 100%. Then what is it? Is it 70%, is it 80%, is it 90%? For me, there\u2019s still that conversation, where he understands the most important part of the season is to come, and he understands his value with our team.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES \u2013 Shohei Ohtani was held out of the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 lineup on Thursday because of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":835223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,10214,1187,591,5149,85],"class_list":["post-835222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-dave-roberts","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835222","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=835222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/835222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/835223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=835222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=835222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=835222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}