Shohei Ohtani is scuffling at the plate, and so far the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar is coming up mostly empty in the postseason.<\/p>\n
After stumbling into the playoffs battling biceps and knee injuries, he was 2 for 13 (.154) with two walks, four strikeouts and one stolen base in their four-game NL Division Series win over the Atlanta Braves, to go with a .421 OPS and .154 slugging percentage.<\/p>\n
Clearly not up to the four-time MVP’s standards.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a very good self-evaluator, a very extremely high competitor and expects a lot from himself,\u201d manager Dave Roberts said this week.<\/p>\n
As Ohtani goes, so go the Dodgers. They weren’t much better, hitting just .203 against Atlanta.<\/p>\n
Ohtani was dropped to fifth in the order \u2014 his lowest as a Dodger \u2014 for Game 3 of the NLDS. He reached base twice \u2014 on a catcher\u2019s interference and a walk. He moved up to the cleanup spot for Game 4. He had previously only started in the first or second spot.<\/p>\n
Not postseason punishment, just tactical moves based on opposing pitching.<\/p>\n
Some of Ohtani’s offensive slump can be traced to nagging injuries that limited him to just 139 games in the regular season. He went on the injured list, with right biceps and left knee issues, for the first time as a Dodger in September.<\/p>\n
Ohtani has admitted he’s still not 100% healthy. At times, he doesn’t appear comfortable at the plate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t been able to get a good grasp of the root cause of all this,\u201d he said through a translator last week. \u201cI think that process is going to happen during the offseason when I\u2019m going to have a little bit more time to be able to address it. But as of now, it\u2019s something I\u2019m just going to have to manage.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, health is only part of the equation. He’s been uncharacteristically aggressive swinging at pitches outside of the strike zone, something Roberts hopes he improves going into Game 1 of the NL Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe can still do a better job of staying in the strike zone,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cIt’s hard to have success when you’re out of the zone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roberts has maintained unwavering trust in Ohtani and believes his bat will come to life as the Dodgers’ bid for a third consecutive World Series championship continues.<\/p>\n
Bolstered by their pitching, the Dodgers are in the NLCS against the Brewers for the second straight year.<\/p>\n
Ohtani led the Dodgers to a four-game sweep of Milwaukee last year, when the Brewers hit a measly .118 against Dodgers pitching.<\/p>\n
He was 5 for 14 (.357) with three home runs, four walks and five strikeouts as NLCS MVP \u2014 all three homers came in a memorable Game 4 clinch in which he also struck out 10 as a pitcher. He had a 1.643 OPS and 1.143 slugging percentage.<\/p>\n
Ohtani won\u2019t be pitching this time because of his injuries, with his place in the rotation taken by two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal. Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow return.<\/p>\n
Elite pitching can carry a team deep into the postseason, but poor hitting often leaves a team with a thin margin for error, especially when its biggest star is struggling.<\/p>\n
\u201cHitting homers, slugging, it\u2019s part of his hallmark in the batter\u2019s box,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cHe\u2019s very in tune with what\u2019s being said, what he hasn\u2019t done.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
\n See AP\u2019s full MLB coverage here\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shohei Ohtani is scuffling at the plate, and so far the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar is coming up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":876797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[160359,2724,363,99],"class_list":["post-876796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ap-sports","tag-associated-press","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876796","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=876796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/876796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/876797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=876796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=876796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=876796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}