The Dodgers are leading the NL West, but the problems are starting to pile up. Injuries keep mounting, the bullpen has been unreliable, and now Shohei Ohtani’s return to the mound has hit another snag.
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For a moment, it looked like he was finally close. Ohtani faced live hitters on August 22, and the Dodgers were reportedly eyeing an early September return. Then came his August 28 bullpen session. He threw just 20 pitches, still did not feel right afterward, and any chance of him pitching Sunday against Detroit was immediately scrapped. Tuesday is off the table too.
“If any pitcher was feeling like this, we wouldn’t run him out there,” manager Dave Roberts stated, as per ESPN reporter Alden González.
It all started in June, when Ohtani began feeling discomfort behind his left knee. There was no single play that caused it, and Ohtani himself pointed toward his pitching mechanics.
He admitted, “It’s actually hard to pinpoint at what moment this happened. All I can really know for sure is that I think my mechanics weren’t quite great in terms of my pitching side, so I believe that had something to do with this.”
Imaging showed no structural damage, so he initially kept playing and pitching through it. But the problem never fully disappeared.
After his July 3 start, his last outing on the mound, Ohtani also began dealing with tightness in his right biceps.
By July 10, the lingering knee irritation forced the Dodgers to scratch his next start and keep him out of the All-Star Game.
After that move, Ohtani said, “The goal is to be able to throw according to a regular schedule [in the second half]. Although I could’ve started [Friday], it would’ve still been pushing the envelope a little bit. But my every intention is to use the off-days to make sure I’m in a good place to be able to return to the rotation.”
The Dodgers then turned to treatment. Ohtani received an Orthovisc injection to lubricate the knee and reduce irritation, but Los Angeles still had to carefully manage his workload. What first looked like a manageable knee issue had developed into a problem involving both his lower body and throwing arm, slowing his pitching comeback through late July.
August finally brought some progress. Ohtani resumed bullpen work and began building toward a return, but that optimism faded after his latest session. Roberts later admitted that neither his knee nor his biceps was fully ready for the workload.
“To be quite frank, I just don’t see everything getting to 100% by the end of the season,” the manager said. “But there are a lot of pitchers that are not 100% and still viable. So again, it’s just not an exact science.”
The Dodgers will get a clearer picture once they return from Detroit for a nine-game homestand in Los Angeles.
“I don’t even know if it’s a setback in the sense that [he] hasn’t been 100%, and so you’re hoping that each day gets a little bit better and closer,” Roberts added. “Once we have to make a decision, which would be [Sunday], [he] just is not there.”
And the timing could hardly be worse. The Dodgers are chasing a third straight World Series title, while Ohtani has posted a 1.79 ERA across 14 starts this season. The question is no longer whether Los Angeles wants him back on the mound. It is whether his body will allow it before October.