Shohei Ohtani hit his 100th home run with the Los Angeles Dodgers on the hardest hit ball of his career Tuesday, but it wasn’t enough to carry his team to a victory over the host Pittsburgh Pirates.
Ohtani (1-1, 4.18 ERA) will try to rectify that on the mound Wednesday night when he opposes fellow right-hander Braxton Ashcraft (4-2, 2.58) in the second contest of a three-game series.
Ohtani will make his 12th start of the season for the Dodgers (78-60) and his second in his career against the Pirates (62-77), against whom he has a 1-0 record and a 7.11 ERA.
Ohtani’s 373-foot home run off Pirates rookie prospect Bubba Chandler on Tuesday came off the bat at 120 mph, which is the hardest-hit in the Statcast era by any Dodgers hitter.
On the mound, Ohtani steadily has been building his workload since he came back from a second elbow surgery.
In his most recent start last Wednesday, Ohtani pitched five innings for the first time for the Dodgers and picked up his first win with the club after allowing one run on two hits and two walks. Ohtani recorded nine strikeouts in a 5-1 victory at home over the Cincinnati Reds.
“The fact that I was able to reach five innings was really key in terms of moving forward,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “Moving forward, it’s going to be a collaboration between the doctors, the front office and (manager) Dave Roberts in terms of how we want to proceed if we’re going to throw more than five.”
Ashcraft will make his fifth start since joining the Pirates’ rotation on Aug. 9 and his first ever against the Dodgers. In his most recent outing Thursday, he pitched a career-high 5 2/3 innings and allowed one run on four hits while striking out five and issuing one walk. He had a no-decision in a 4-1 loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
Despite the solid numbers, Ashcraft called his most recent start a grind but took solace in being able to set a career high for length.
“The starts that you feel good, you go out and you expect to have success,” Ashcraft said. “That’s not saying that any outing that you have, you don’t expect to have success. But the times where you may not have your best stuff, which is hardly ever, that’s what baseball is about. That’s what being a pitcher is about, and that’s what pitching for a long time in the big leagues is about.
“So being able to go out and still go 5 2/3 (innings) and be relatively efficient and give myself a chance to record a quality start, like it’s a good step in the right direction.”
The Dodgers, meanwhile, signed left-handed pitcher Andrew Heaney to a minor league deal on Monday.
Heaney went 5-10 with a 5.39 ERA in 120 1/3 innings for the Pirates earlier this season. He was released on Aug. 29 after being designated for assignment three days earlier.
–Field Level Media
