Do Dodgers need “Will he hit?” drama every time

SAN DIEGO — Say what you’ll about Barry Bonds, but Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts supplied this compelling description of him: “Very low maintenance.”

He ready himself every day. If he was healthy, he was enjoying, and why wouldn’t he? He was the best hitter in baseball.

“With Barry, you just pencil [him] in the lineup and you don’t think anything of it,” said Roberts, his former teammate.

Roberts now manages Shohei Ohtani, who has received the most precious participant award 4 occasions. The only individual with more MVP awards is Bonds.

You would possibly suppose Roberts would deal with Ohtani the same approach as Bonds: If Ohtani is healthy, he is in the lineup.

Instead, on the day he let Ohtani pitch and hit in the same sport for the first time in a month, Roberts insisted he would make that choice on a “start by start” foundation for the foreseeable future.

That dangers turning the query of “Will he hit or not?” from a dialogue into a weekly distraction.

Bonds didn’t pitch, of course. Ohtani is attempting to full his first full season as a pitcher in 4 years, after elbow surgical procedure in 2023, and he already has thrown more innings this 12 months than he did last 12 months.

“For Shohei, you’re just constantly trying to manage his workload, his health, the surgeries and all that stuff,” Roberts said.

“With Barry, it was really just turnkey. Nothing against Shohei. That’s part of being a two-way player.”

On Wednesday, Ohtani hit a home run and pitched 5 shutout innings, main the Dodgers to a 4-0 victory and a sequence victory over the rival San Diego Padres.

Do the Dodgers risk overthinking this?

Roberts said he believes the crew can consider the pressure on Ohtani without driving him loopy every week questioning whether or not he goes to hit the next time he pitches.

“I think he understands that it’s fluid,” Roberts said. “I don’t think that there is one model. It should be a read and react thing. I don’t know how the week is going to look after this off day.

“I could change my mind and have him not hit in his next outing, but that’s more on workload and how he feels.”

Consider Wednesday’s outing: It was Ohtani’s shortest start of the season, 5 innings and 88 pitches of what Roberts and Ohtani agreed was a “grind.” In the first three innings, he retired all 9 batters. In his closing two innings, he confronted 10 batters and 5 reached base.

In the box rating: 5 scoreless innings.

“I have a pretty high standard as far as performance,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “It didn’t really match.”

Said Roberts: “I think it’s just another case in point that it’s good for us to be mindful of the workload and just not take that for granted.”

Roberts began asking Ohtani to stop hitting on days he pitched because he was slumping. Ohtani didn’t essentially see the connection and, in any case, the hunch seems to be over: On the six video games of this street journey, Ohtani is batting .478 in six video games, with six extra-base hits, six walks, and 9 runs batted in.

On Wednesday, on the first pitch of the first sport in which he hit and pitched in the same sport, Ohtani launched a home run into the Petco Park seaside past middle subject.

“I think that he’s very mindful of everything that’s said about him,” Roberts said. “At times, he uses that as motivation to prove people wrong, that he can do something.

“So, yeah, he’s certainly aware of all of it.”

For all the chatter, and for the weeks in which Ohtani at bat was not the Ohtani we now have come to count on, his OPS is .885.

In 2022, the last 12 months he pitched a full season, his OPS was .875. He completed second in the American League MVP race to Aaron Judge, who hit 62 home runs.

Ohtani hit 34, and he also put up a 2.33 earned-run average. He leads the majors in ERA this season, at 0.73.

Pencil him in.