Los Angeles \u2013 Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday he will not drop Shohei Ohtani for a crucial playoff clash with the Milwaukee Brewers after the Japanese superstar insisted he feels \u201cgood enough\u201d to contribute.<\/p>\n
Four-time MVP Ohtani has been in dire form after returning from multiple injuries this postseason, hitting just 3-for-20 in the playoffs, with no home run since August.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers trail their best-of-seven National League Championship Series 2-0, and reports circulated following Monday\u2019s loss that Roberts and his staff were considering the drastic measure of benching his talisman.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did speak to Sho, had a great conversation. He\u2019s adamant he feels good enough to be in there,\u201d Roberts told a press conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s close to finding something with his swing. I feel great about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dodgers, chasing a rare World Series three-peat, have three home games beginning Wednesday to get the series back on track.<\/p>\n
But the Brewers, who led Major League Baseball with 103 regular-season wins, need just two wins to reach their second-ever World Series, 44 years after their 1982 appearance.<\/p>\n
Ohtani, who has struggled with knee and biceps injuries, has not hit a home run since Aug. 18. He has just one RBI in his last 110 plate appearances.<\/p>\n
During the playoffs Ohtani has seven strikeouts and no extra-base hits.<\/p>\n
But Ohtani said Tuesday that his \u201csymptoms have subdued a lot,\u201d and that he is focused now on his swing mechanics.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver the course of this long season, there\u2019s only really a short period of time when my mechanics is completely in sync,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it\u2019s just really kind of just going back and forth, finding the right parts of the swing and managing just the different parts of the swing. So it\u2019s a constant, ongoing process that\u2019s headed in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ohtani has already dropped to fifth in the batting order this post-season \u2014 the lowest he\u2019s hit since 2020 \u2014\u00a0and Roberts suggested he could bat as low as six on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
But the manager denied he had ever considered unilaterally \u201cbenching\u201d Ohtani for poor form.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was more of, \u2019hey, man, if you\u2019re not feeling good enough that you feel like you can perform up to your ability, then we\u2019ll pivot, give you a couple days,\u2019\u201d said Roberts.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd talking to him, he feels like he\u2019s close to finding something and was close yesterday in finding something mechanically. With that, I\u2019m excited. I\u2019m all about it. So he\u2019ll be in there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles \u2013 Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday he will not drop Shohei Ohtani for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":927380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,10214,1187,591,64736,128066,5149,85],"class_list":["post-927379","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-mlb-playoffs","tag-nlcs","tag-shohei-ohtani","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927379","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=927379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/927379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/927380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=927379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=927379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=927379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}