{"id":64598,"date":"2025-08-07T07:54:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:54:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/64598\/"},"modified":"2025-08-07T07:54:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-07T07:54:07","slug":"shohei-ohtanis-ruthian-feats-are-not-enough-as-bullpen-melts-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/64598\/","title":{"rendered":"Shohei Ohtani’s Ruthian feats are not enough as bullpen melts down"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Only one player in the last 110 years has tried to do what the Dodgers<\/a>\u2019 Shohei Ohtani<\/a> is doing this season, which is to pitch and hit successfully at the big-league level.<\/p>\n

Babe Ruth twice won more than 20 games and led the American League in ERA and starts before the Red Sox, then the Yankees, decided pitching was distracting from Ruth\u2019s hitting and put him out to pasture in right field.<\/p>\n

Over the next three seasons, Ruth broke the major league record for home runs three times.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers and Ohtani insist he\u2019ll remain a two-way player for the time being, but recent performances suggests both the Red Sox and Yankees may have been on to something when they took Ruth off the mound.<\/p>\n

Ohtani made his eighth start of the year Wednesday and it was his best as a Dodger, with the right-hander giving up just a tainted run on two hits and striking out a season-high eight in four innings. Perhaps more important, he also slugged his first home run in 10 games in the third inning of a 5-3 matinee loss<\/a> to the St. Louis Cardinals.<\/p>\n

It was the first truly Ruthian two-way performances for Ohtani since he joined the Dodgers but it was one the team\u2019s defense and bullpen wasted, with three relievers combining to yield four runs on 10 hits over the final five innings. <\/p>\n

The two most important ones came in the eighth, when the Cardinals turned a one-run deficit into a one-run lead, greeting Alex Vesia<\/a> with a pair of singles before a two-out hit from Jordan Walker drove in the tying run and the winning one scored on a throwing error by third baseman Alex Freeland<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt never feels good,\u201d manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said of the loss, his team\u2019s 17th in 30 games since July 1. \u201cIs there a level of frustration the way the second half has started off? Yeah. We just haven\u2019t synced up. We just can\u2019t get on track offensively. We\u2019re not playing great.\u201d<\/p>\n

That can\u2019t be said of Ohtani, although the effort he gave at the plate Wednesday equaled what he\u2019s been doing on the mound recently. He has posted a 2.37 ERA and struck out 25 in 19 innings in his eight starts, yet in the same eight games he\u2019s batted .219. In his last six starts on the mound, he\u2019s gone just three for 24 at the plate.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s part of a slump that began in mid-June, when Ohtani made his pitching debut for the Dodgers. At the time he led the majors in runs and led the National League in homers and slugging percentage. Since then, his strikeout rate has risen, his average has plummeted more than 20 points and he\u2019s clubbed just 14 homers, one fewer than he had in May alone as a designated hitter.<\/p>\n

Ohtani said he can\u2019t explain the difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t really try to think too differently on days that I pitch and hit and on days that I only hit,\u201d he said through a translator. \u201cI\u2019m thinking of adjusting how I work out and do my work in between my outings. Especially now that I\u2019m going to be throwing more innings.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ohtani both pitched and hit on his way to two MVP awards with the Angels<\/a>. But last season, the first in five years in which he didn\u2019t pitch while recovering from a second elbow surgery, Ohtani sent career highs in virtually every offensive category and led the NL in runs (134), homers (54) and RBIs (130) while becoming the first player in history to hit 50 homers and steal 50 bases in a single season.<\/p>\n

That won him a third MVP award and a World Series<\/a> ring, replicas of which were handed out Wednesday to the 44,621 sun-splashed fans who came to see Ohtani pitch. But in 2021, when he topped 10 starts for the first time with the Angels, he hit a full-season career-low .257 and struck out a career-high 189 times.<\/p>\n

For Ohtani, the manager said, the challenge now is finding comfort in the crowed new routine.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not the norm,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s been over two years since he\u2019s done this, so he\u2019s still sort of getting adjusted to this lifestyle, as far as kind of the day to day.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s there yet. It\u2019s only going to get better as he gets more time doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ohtani breezed through his longest start as a Dodger, topping 100 mph multiple times and retiring the first six Cardinals in order. It would have been seven but shortstop Mookie Betts and second baseman Miguel Rojas lost Walker\u2019s popout in a high sky leading off the third. That went for a hit and Walker came around to score on a stolen base, a ground out and Brendan Donovan\u2019s infield single.<\/p>\n

Ohtani struck out the next four hitters he faced while giving his team the lead in the third, following Alex Call\u2019s leadoff double \u2014 his first hit as a Dodger \u2014 with a two-run homer to center. The hit was the 1,000th in the majors for Ohtani while the homer was his 39th of the season.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers added another run in the fourth when Andy Pages led off with a single, moved to second on a wild pitch, stole third and continued home when the throw from catcher Pedro Pag\u00e9s hit the bat of Miguel Rojas and ricocheted toward the Dodger dugout.<\/p>\n

Then came the daily bullpen meltdown, with the Cardinals pushing a run across against Justin Wrobleski in the sixth, setting the stage for their eighth-inning rally against Vesia. Brock Stewart gave up the final run in the ninth.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you look at the last couple weeks, I think our bullpen has been good,\u201d Roberts said of a relief corps that has failed to covert a third of its 52 save opportunities. \u201cWe didn\u2019t finish it off today. But I think in general, the bullpen in the last couple weeks has been pretty stable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only one player in the last 110 years has tried to do what the Dodgers\u2019 Shohei Ohtani is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[10697,18127,3959,4279,47669,22074,9880,47670,18123,47671,19630,5190,47673,99,47672,2384],"class_list":["post-64598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-babe-ruth","tag-bullpen","tag-dodger","tag-dodgers","tag-eighth-start","tag-hit","tag-homer","tag-jordan-walker","tag-ohtani","tag-pitching","tag-run","tag-season","tag-second-baseman-miguel-rojas","tag-sports","tag-third-inning","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}