For so long, the biggest question surrounding Shohei Ohtani’s future as a pitcher was simple.
When, after a second career Tommy John surgery, would he finally get back on the mound? When, after a year and a half of exclusively hitting, would he be able to resume two-way duties?
This past week, that answer finally arrived.
Twice in seven days, Ohtani climbed the bump as the Dodgers’ starter, throwing one inning in each outing in his long-awaited return to pitching.
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Both times, he left his teammates and coaches in astonished amazement, giving them their first up-close glimpse of his dual-role skillset.
“I've seen [him throw] bullpens and lives and simulated games, or whatever,” manager Dave Roberts said Sunday. “But to kind of watch it in real time, to go from the mound to the on-deck circle and then go to the batter's box, it’s pretty remarkable. And he's just handling it the right way. He's just unflappable."
What comes next, however, remains shrouded in some uncertainty.
Now that Ohtani is again pitching in live-game action, new questions are lingering about where his build-up will go from here.
"It's going to be a gradual process,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton on Sunday. “I want to see improvements with the quality of the pitches that I'm throwing, and then also increasing the amount of pitches. So it's going to be gradual."
It was no surprise that, in Ohtani’s return to pitching on June 16, he was limited to only one inning. It was a trade-off he and the team made to get him back into a real game sooner, agreeing to give him a live start even if they knew it wouldn’t extend past one inning.
Entering Ohtani’s second start on Sunday afternoon, however, the thinking was that the right-hander could be ready to push into the second — that, to eventually get stretched out for full-length starts, he would begin building up his workload by adding another inning each time out.
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The way Ohtani pitched Sunday certainly warranted a second inning.
After giving up two hits and one run over a 28-pitch outing against the San Diego Padres six days prior, he collected two strikeouts in a scoreless 18-pitch inning against the Washington Nationals, his only baserunner reaching on a dropped pop fly by shortstop Mookie Betts.
"Overall, I was able to relax much better compared to my last outing,” Ohtani said. "The way my body moves when I pitch, it's something that I worked on with the pitching coaches and I felt a lot better this time."
However, in the top of the second, Ohtani was once again replaced on the rubber. Despite his improved execution and efficiency, it turned out he and the team had made a predetermined decision not to push him for a second inning quite yet.
"That was the original plan,” Ohtani said of being removed after the first.
“Going into today's game,” Roberts added, “we felt really comfortable with one."
It hammered home the reality of what lies ahead for Ohtani; the cautious, methodical and, as Roberts also described it, "gradual" pace with which the team will handle his pitching workload for the time being.
"I think that it's more of just trying to get the foundation, the building blocks as he's [pitching and] taking at-bats,” Roberts said. “[We are] erring on the side of caution … There's no sense in rushing it right now."
As Ohtani returns to pitching, there are new factors the Dodgers will have to monitor in his all-around performance.
Already, the reigning MVP has cut down on his base-stealing while ramping up as a pitcher: After swiping 11 bags in his first 50 games, he hasn’t even attempted a steal since throwing his first live batting practice session on May 25.
His place in the leadoff spot could be altered on days he pitches as well, with Roberts leaving open the possibility of moving him down in the batting order to give him more time to transition from pitcher to hitter (at least in the first inning of home games, when he currently has to hustle from the mound to the plate after the top half of the frame).
Then, there is perhaps the biggest question: Whether the burden of pitching will affect Ohtani’s all-important production with the bat?
That dynamic came under scrutiny this week, after Ohtani went just two for 19 in the five games following his first pitching start.
"I don't think that's a fatigue thing," Roberts insisted Sunday morning. "But we'll manage it. I can only take him at his word, and the swing speed and all the stuff we sort of track is still in line."
Ohtani did snap that slump after his inning on the mound Sunday, finishing the day with a three-run triple in the seventh and two-run home run in the eighth.
“I do feel like I do have to work on some things,” Ohtani said. “But at the same time, I do feel like I can perform better, even better than I used to be able to perform at."
All of this is to say, while Ohtani has mastered his two-way role before (twice winning American League MVP while doing it with the Angels), the Dodgers are taking nothing for granted about his pitching comeback right now.
Before they begin adding to his pitching workload, they want to make sure they’ve accounted for any unintended side effects.
“All these conversations we have with him, obviously,” Roberts said. “He's understanding of where he's at, where we're at, and appreciating the fact that as time goes on, we'll get to a certain point.”
Before Sunday’s game, Roberts didn’t even commit to fully stretching out Ohtani like a traditional starter by the second half of the season.
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“That’s kind of TBD,” he said when asked when Ohtani might be fully built-up for normal-length starts. “I think we’re always gonna be cautious. So I don’t even know what that’s going to look like, to be ‘fully built-up.’ I don’t think anyone knows what that looks like. Because it’s not a normal starting pitcher. So to say six [innings] and 90 [pitches], I don’t even know if we’ll get to that point.”
Could that mean using Ohtani as only a glorified opener for the rest of this season? Or stretching him out only if a currently shorthanded rotation doesn’t eventually get healthy?
Time will have to tell on those questions, with neither the Dodgers nor Ohtani ready to commit to any answers until they see how he continues to respond to his return to two-way duties.
“As we build more of a foundation, there will be some latitude," Roberts said. "I think that we're still gathering [information]. But again, once we ramp up more, it might be a different conversation."
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
