How will Dodgers use Shohei Ohtani as a pitcher

PHOENIX –– Electric.

That was the first word that came to mind for Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing on Tuesday, when asked to describe how Shohei Ohtani’s first live pitching session of the spring looked from behind the plate.

“He was locating all his pitches, getting the misses that he wanted,” Rushing said. “Yeah, he looked really, really good today.”

When it comes to Ohtani, that has been the common refrain around Dodgers camp in the early days of spring training.

For his time since signing with the team three years ago, the two-way star is coming off a fully healthy offseason, unencumbered by the Tommy John surgery he had at the end of 2023 and the labrum repair he underwent after 2024.

Also for his first time as a Dodger, Ohtani enters this season preparing to play both ways on a full-time basis, setting his sights on not only a fifth career MVP award but also contention for Cy Young honors (something never before won by a Japanese player).

“He seems like he’s on a mission, pitching-wise,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said later Tuesday afternoon. “And whenever we’ve seen him on a mission, good things happen.”

Indeed, there seems to be little question this year about whether Ohtani can re-emerge as one of the top pitchers in the sport –– a status he earned by posting a 2.84 ERA over three seasons with the Angels from 2021-2023, then a 2.87 mark in 14 workload-restricted outings in his return from Tommy John with the Dodgers last season.

But, there are still uncertainties over how aggressively the Dodgers will utilize him in 2026, with the club trying to strike a delicate balance between his dueling (and potentially draining) roles on the mound and at the plate.

“Obviously, last year, he was coming back from surgery, and so we were very deliberate about a lot of things,” Friedman said. “This year we will be less so, but still mindful of it.”

This week, the challenges of that process have begun to come into focus.

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Manager Dave Roberts called it a positive sign that Ohtani was already facing hitters on Tuesday, with the right-hander throwing 18 pitches and hitting 98 mph with his fastball over a one-inning outing.

“He’s certainly way ahead of where he was last year on the pitching side,” Roberts said. “That’s a good thing.”

Yet, Ohtani’s return to full-time pitching will still face some workload-related hurdles –– with the Dodgers prioritizing his availability as a pitcher come this year’s playoffs, as well as the long-term health of his now twice-surgically-repaired arm.

“Obviously, we have designs of playing through October this year, and Shohei being a big part of that on the mound,” Friedman said. “That, coupled with the idea that he wants to pitch for the next eight years, and we want him to pitch for the next eight years, (is why we’re) just trying to be really mindful of all of that.”

Right now, the most pressing question has to do with Ohtani’s pitching status for opening day.

Though he won’t pitch in next month’s World Baseball Classic for Team Japan, his absence from Dodgers camp will make it harder for him to stay on a normal ramp-up schedule while he serves as a designated hitter in the international tournament. Roberts said it’s “very unlikely” Ohtani pitches in any Cactus League games before he departs for the event later this month, meaning his first actual game action on the mound might not come until the final week of spring training.

Friedman still expects Ohtani to be ready to make starts at the beginning of the regular season, and said he “certainly wouldn’t bet against” the 31-year-old’s chances in the Cy Young race. 

But he also cautioned that the Dodgers will do a lot of “reading and reacting” to determine Ohtani’s pitching schedule over the course of the season –– acknowledging that “it’s hard to say” whether Ohtani (who is expected to get more extended breaks between his pitching outings than normal starters do, upwards of perhaps 6-8 days on some occassions) will make enough starts to legitimately vie for the sport’s top pitching award.

“It’s a heavy, heavy load that he takes on, that is different from every other player in baseball,” Friedman said. “A lot of it is going to be reading and reacting based on how he’s feeling, how he’s recovering, what the load looks like. But at some point, stepping up that level of aggression (for him as a pitcher) as we get deeper into the season, that will be a little bit different than last year.”

What the Dodgers are most confident in for now is the quality of Ohtani’s stuff.

In the wake of Tuesday’s live session, Rushing said Ohtani’s throwing mechanics already look “cleaner” than when he was returning from Tommy John last year, praising his execution of a sinker/slider/splitter arsenal.

“I think he’s moving down the mound a lot better this year than he had in the past,” Rushing said. “His body is starting to feel recuperated, rejuvenated.”

And when asked about his expectations for Ohtani’s pitching this year, the second-year catcher called his superstar battery mate “limitless,” marveling at the way “he can do basically whatever you ask him to.”

“He is the greatest, and he wants to be the greatest,” Rushing said. “He sets the bar for this clubhouse, the way he works, being obviously as good as he is right now. And he only wants to get better.”

Time will tell how that materializes in his usage plan for 2026.