As the Los Angeles Dodgers continue to slow play Shohei Ohtani’s return to the mound after a second elbow surgery, manager Dave Roberts told team flagship radio station AM-570 on Sunday that the star two-way player will not pitch before the All-Star break.
“I do think we are being very methodical about it,” Roberts told the radio station Monday about Ohtani’s recovery program from his 2023 Tommy John revision surgery. “I can safely say that he is probably not going to pitch for us until after the break.”
Ohtani, 30, pitched live batting practice for the first time before Saturday’s road game against the New York Mets. He threw 23 pitches, including his slider, which he has only started throwing in bullpen sessions in the past week.
The team has three starters currently on the injured list with shoulder issues: left-hander Blake Snell and right-handers Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki. A total of 14 pitchers on the Dodgers’ 40-man roster are on the IL.
But the club will not rush Ohtani to the rotation in order to fill a pressing need.
“The main part of it is (Ohtani’s) value to us as a hitter,” Roberts said. “He is so valuable and to try and speed something up, to take on some type of downside just doesn’t make sense.”
Without pitching an inning last season, or playing in the field, Ohtani still won the National League MVP award with 54 home runs and 59 steals in his first season in Los Angeles. Heading into Monday’s road game against the Cleveland Guardians, he was batting .295 with a 1.025 OPS and 18 home runs to tie for the major league lead.
In 86 career major league starts as a pitcher, all with the Los Angeles Angels from 2018-23, Ohtani has gone 38-19 with a 3.01 ERA. His hitting and pitching exploits helped him to earn American League MVP awards with the Angels in 2021 and 2023.
Over the offseason, Ohtani’s return to the mound was estimated for this month. President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman recently said the recovery program was slowed with the goal to have Ohtani available through October.
“We knew we were just going to be a little bit more cautious and make sure that this got to a really good spot before we really started upping the intensity on the pitching side,” Friedman said last week. “… At the beginning of the season, hopefully it was (going to be) a very deep October run. And so we slowed it down.”
–Field Level Media
