The Los Angeles Dodgers went into their road trip planning on having Shohei Ohtani start in the middle game of a series against the Pittsburgh Pirates, but he was scratched from the outing due to feeling under the weather.
Ohtani has remained in the lineup as the Dodgers’ designated hitter despite not feeling 100%, and managed to hit his 100th home run with the team. He did so in record fashion by reaching the century mark in the fewest number of games with the Dodgers.
As for Ohtani the pitcher, manager Dave Roberts initially said the team expected the right-hander to start against the Baltimore Orioles. But that was later updated to Ohtani being pushed back into the homestand to afford him more time to recover from a chest cold.
Friday then brought about yet another change as Ohtani was listed as the Dodgers’ starting pitcher in place of Tyler Glasnow, who was scratched due to lower back tightness.
Shohei Ohtani’s start vs. Orioles
Although Ohtani completed a season-high five innings in his start last week, he was expected to have a shorter outing against the Orioles due to the late change in schedule.
He wound up throwing 70 pitches over 3.2 innings and exited with the game tied.
Ohtani retired the first five batters faced before allowing a two-out single in the second inning. Emmanuel Rivera moved into scoring position on a wild pitch, but Ohtani then struck out Dylan Beavers to end the inning.
There was a slight delay before he pitched the bottom of the third due to Ohtani ending the top half of the inning on base after his walk. Ohtani didn’t show any effects from that, but a two-out walk and infield single extended the inning.
He then fell behind in the count 2-0 to Gunnar Henderson, but induced a soft tapper back to the mound on his third pitch of the at-bat.
Ohtani was removed with a runner on third base, which Anthony Banda stranded to preserve the scoreless start. Perhaps sensing his start was on the verge of ending, Ohtani threw four fastballs of at least 100.2 mph to Rivera, the final batter he faced.
Included in that was Ohtani’s hardest pitch of the night, a 101.5 mph four-seam fastball.
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