Late Tuesday night, Dave Roberts’ postgame press conference ended the way too many of them have lately.
The Dodgers manager was asked for an update on Shohei Ohtani’s health, then pressed for a prediction about whether or not the two-way star would be in the next day’s lineup.
“He’ll be in the lineup tomorrow,” Roberts said on this occasion, after confirming Ohtani had been available off the bench in Tuesday’s 3-2 win over the Cincinnati Reds.
The real problem, however, is that the question has become a daily requisite.
In a season that began with so much promise, Ohtani is now limping down the stretch surrounded by a constant cloud of such uncertainty.
Before Tuesday’s game, Roberts took time to reflect on Ohtani’s 2026 season –– and how the 32-year-old unicorn went from chasing Cy Young and MVP honors to playing through left knee and right arm injuries that have severely limited his one-of-a-kind skill set.
Roberts said he and the club had “learned” important lessons from the experience. He recognized “that sometimes potentially trying to get ahead of managing [Ohtani’s] workload” was a difficult, delicate task.
Yet, he was careful not to second-guess the way Ohtani had been handled during his first full two-way season with the club (or, what was supposed to be, anyway).
He echoed the same sentiments Ohtani himself had shared the night before, expressing no regrets about the superstar’s usage even in light of the predicament the player and team now find themselves in.
“Obviously, probably, you can say a lot [if you] look back,” Roberts said. “Anyone can do that, and say, ‘What could you have done better or different?’ Absolutely. That’s something going forward we’re gonna look at. But it’s certainly not a blame game thing.”
Such revisionist history dates back to mid-June, when Ohtani first developed his knee problem but initially attempted to try pitching through it. There were then his repeatedly failed efforts to ramp up on the mound, even after he had been removed from the Dodgers rotation in early July following the flare-up of his right biceps.
Granted, for most of the summer the problems didn’t seem to hamper Ohtani at the plate.
But then last month, his offense began to decline as he took on a heavier workload in his ultimately aborted pitching progression.
Two weeks ago, his expected return to the mound was scuttled after he felt lingering issues in a bullpen session, leading the team to finally pull the plug on his long-awaited return to pitching.
At the plate, meanwhile, he slipped into a 6-for-46 slump as a hitter, culminating in a four-strikeout performance last week in which he finally showed some visible pain with his swing, prompting the club to give him four days off afterward.
“It’s, I guess, under the thing of, ‘you don’t know until you know,’ and it’s important to kind of learn from experiences,” Roberts said Tuesday, now that only now do the Dodgers have the benefit of hindsight.
One big lesson: Though Roberts said “it always feels good to run him out there offensively as a DH, always feels good when you pencil him in as a starter,” he highlighted the importance of “just really trying to be mindful” of the toll Ohtani’s body takes over the course of a two-way campaign.
“It’s good for all of us to kind of appreciate that he’s not supernatural,” he added, “as much as we think he might be at times.”
Though Roberts said the club hasn’t discussed plans for next year with Ohtani yet, they still envision him attempting a two-way role again.
In the meantime, they’re hopeful their renewed plan to carefully manage his late-season workload will help him get back on track with his swing in time for October.
“I think that a day here or there is not the worst thing, to make sure that his body overall feels as close to 100% as possible,” Roberts said.
Still, this isn’t the place Ohtani or the team hoped he would be at this stage of the year –– even if, as Ohtani noted Monday, they have at least avoided a worst-case scenario “where I couldn’t play as a hitter.”
“It’s learning from what happened and getting better,” Roberts said.
For now, in the wake of Ohtani’s failed two-way season, that’s the best he and the Dodgers can do.
