NEW YORK — Bunt, steal, whatever it takes to get Shohei Ohtani to the plate with runners in scoring position, says Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, who might be doing the same thing if he were managing the Dodgers instead of watching the NLCS from the broadcast trailer.
“They’re not just going to intentionally walk Ohtani and pitch to Mookie [Betts]. It’s like, pick your poison,” Jeter said. “So at this point of the season, I’d force their hands. I like it.”
And why not? In a season full of mind-bending statistical achievements, Ohtani’s latest is this: He he has 16 hits in his last 19 at-bats with runners in scoring position dating to the final days of the regular season, making him the first big league hitter with that many hits in any stretch of 20 at-bats in those circumstances — regular season and postseason — since Frank Howard had a pair of 16-for-19 sprees for the Dodgers in 1962.
But there’s a strange statistical twist.
Since the start of what is his first career postseason, Ohtani is 4-for-5 with a homer and a pair of walks with runners in scoring position and 6-for-8 with a homer and three walks with runners on base.
But he’s 0-for-19 with 10 strikeouts when the bases are empty.
It’s leading to all manner of questions about what the Dodgers should do to get the most from their superstar designated hitter, including this one: Is there any thought about shuffling the lineup to move Ohtani out of the leadoff hole?
“No, there isn’t,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Tuesday, when his team worked out at Citi Field prior to Wednesday’s Game 3 of an NLCS tied at one game apiece. “I just think that it’s just funny how things change, where early on there was a lot of concern about Shohei not being able to get hits with the runners in scoring position, and now we’re all trying to find ways that — we have to get guys on base so he can hit, right? I kind of find that comical, a little bit.”
Roberts said he’s open to other lineup tweaks, “but to think that I’m going to move Shohei to the four [hole] or the three, that’s just not going to happen.”
OK, lineup changes are out. But a subtle shift of strategy, perhaps, is in. And Jeter said he doesn’t blame the Dodgers if they bend their regular-season ways to do whatever it takes to put Ohtani in as many run-producing situations as possible in the postseason, like they did in Game 1 at Dodger Stadium.
As a team, the Dodgers had only 10 sacrifice bunts in the regular season and ranked at the bottom of the National League with four bunt hits. So it stood out when, on two occasions in the first four innings of this series, with Ohtani looming on deck or in the hole, a Dodgers hitter squared around to sacrifice. Ohtani’s 2-for-4 night included an RBI single in a 9-0 Dodgers win.
The Mets mostly denied Ohtani in Game 2, but he did have one shot in the ninth with the Dodgers down four runs on the way to a 7-3 loss. Andy Pages took second base uncontested. That run didn’t exactly matter, but it did give Ohtani his first opportunity of the afternoon to bat with a man in scoring position. He walked.
What does Ohtani himself think the Dodgers should do?
“Regardless of however they are pitching to me, my plan is to stay with the same approach as much as possible and not really be too focused on how they attack me,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton on Tuesday at Citi Field. “In terms of the lineup, that is not my job to consider. I’m going to be as flexible as possible regardless of any situation or anywhere in the lineup that I am placed in.”
Modern analytics has changed the way teams think about the concept of “clutch” hitting, and Ohtani’s own season reinforces why. On one hand, he is the runaway favorite for the NL MVP Award after founding the 50-50 club with an NL-best 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases while running up a league-best 1.036 OPS. His 130 RBIs led the NL.
On the other hand, his numbers with runners in scoring position were so pedestrian for a wide swath of the season — in his first 125 games, Ohtani batted .219 in those situations — that Roberts at one point considered sitting down with Ohtani to talk about it.
No conversation was needed. Ohtani hit a walk-off grand slam on Aug. 23 while joining the 40-40 club and hit .516 with six homers in 31 at-bats with runners in scoring position for the rest of the regular season, leading all Major League hitters with at least 10 at-bats in those spots, and flipping the narrative so completely that the Dodgers are now channeling their inner Tommy Lasorda and playing some small ball to bring Ohtani to the plate with men on second and third.
“It’s just playoff baseball,” Roberts said after Tommy Edman and Gavin Lux both bunted with an Ohtani at-bat looming in Game 1. “The truth of the matter is that the postseason is different than the regular season. … If you can get a guy in scoring position, it just creates a little bit more stress.”
Ohtani isn’t the first superstar to struggle for hits in his first postseason. Barry Bonds was 7-for-45 (.156) with no home runs in his first two trips to the NLCS with the Pirates in 1990 and ‘91. Aaron Judge was 9-for-48 (.188) with 27 strikeouts in his first postseason run with the Yankees in 2017. Ohtani is 6-for-27 (.222) so far in this postseason.
“It’s hard for me to say if I’m at the same standard as the players you mentioned,” he told a questioner on Tuesday. “Again, this is my first experience in the postseason, so I can’t really rely on the experiences or my reflection in the past. But what I do know is that we’ve been playing against good teams, better teams, with their best pitchers. So being able to get base hits, put up results, isn’t as easy as maybe it could be.
“With that being said, my focus is, ‘Whatever happened in the previous game, that’s it.’ And I’m really focused on the next game. It’s something that perhaps I would reflect back on once everything is over.”
