Facing elimination in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shook up the lineup by returning to the norm: Shohei Ohtani leading off.<\/p>\n
He penciled in Ohtani\u2019s name at the top of the order for the first time in the postseason.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust seeing the work the last couple days, I like where his head is at,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cI liked the at-bats yesterday, and I felt that trying to shake it up a little bit. Obviously we haven\u2019t performed the way that we\u2019re capable of, so to kind of shake it up a little bit, but something that\u2019s of somewhat normalcy, that our guys are used to.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ohtani, who has dealt with lingering left knee and right biceps injuries for much of the year, hasn\u2019t looked like himself this postseason \u2014 to the point that the Dodgers discussed potentially sitting him to address injury concerns.<\/p>\n
After Ohtnai was adamant that he could play, however, Roberts kept him in the lineup Wednesday for Game 3. And from the No. 6 spot in the lineup, he reached base three times \u2014 on a hit by pitch, walk and single.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers will have to win four straight games to advance to the World Series. Only the 2004 Red Sox have come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a best-of-seven series in MLB history, and Roberts was on that team.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one in this [interview] room thinks \u2014 and no one in that room back in 2004 thought \u2014 we could win the World Series or get to the World Series,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cBut at the end of the day, all that mattered are the guys in the room. So it\u2019s very daunting.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what that group did a great job of. We\u2019ve got nothing to lose. No one thinks we can beat the Yankees down 3-0. No one thinks we\u2019re going to come back in this series. But the most important thing is what those guys believe. That\u2019s probably the biggest take-away that I recall.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the Dodgers\u2019 Game 4 lineup, against Brewers left-handed opener Shane Drohan:<\/p>\n
Shohei Ohtani DH<\/p>\n
Mookie Betts SS<\/p>\n
Freddie Freeman 1B<\/p>\n
Will Smith C<\/p>\n
Kyle Tucker RF<\/p>\n
Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez LF<\/p>\n
Miguel Rojas 2B<\/p>\n
Andy Pages CF<\/p>\n
Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez 3B<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facing elimination in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts shook up the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[3557,193288,123150,2136,2139,426,11592,18949,48,52,51,3556,47,50,49,63,3561,4121,3554,19904,431],"class_list":["post-497669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-am","tag-american-family-field-fs1","tag-best-of-seven-series","tag-brewer","tag-dodger-stadium","tag-dodgers","tag-fox","tag-fs1","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-live-update","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-national-league-championship-series","tag-nlcs-game","tag-odd","tag-p-m-pdt","tag-rest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}