LOS ANGELES -- Shohei Ohtani prefers to do his work indoors, where the environment is controlled and the public is prohibited. Over his first nine seasons in the majors, the sight of him taking batting practice outside has been rare -- reserved almost exclusively for times of prolonged failure, when desperation sets in.
Lately, though, it is commonplace.
Ohtani took batting practice on the field at Dodger Stadium late Tuesday afternoon, an off day in a National League Championship Series that has his Los Angeles Dodgers in a 2-0 hole to the hungry, feisty Milwaukee Brewers. It marked Ohtani’s fourth straight day hitting outdoors, an indication of how prodigious his slump has become. And it took place moments after what Dodgers manager Dave Roberts described as a “great conversation,” one in which Ohtani was “adamant” that he was “close to finding something” and should thus remain in the lineup.
“There’s just complete conviction that he’s onto something,” Roberts said. “He feels like he can help us, and he can help us. For me, that’s all I need to hear.”
With their season on the brink, and their quest to become the first NL team to win three straight championships slipping away, the Dodgers continue to put their faith in Ohtani.
At this point, belief is all they have.
For eight weeks, Ohtani has been a severely diminished version of the four-time MVP who dominated the sport. He hasn’t homered since Aug. 18 and has slashed just .156/.283/.200 since, accumulating three extra-base hits and driving in one run. In 20 at-bats in these playoffs, he has contributed three singles, all the result of awkward swings. In the NLCS, he’s 1-for-7.
And while the Dodgers’ offense is struggling as a whole -- they’ve produced a .591 OPS this postseason and have managed just two hits in 29 at-bats against the Brewers’ vaunted bullpen -- Ohtani’s swings have been especially worrisome. He has spent all of October either late on fastballs at the heart of the zone or flailing helplessly at breaking balls down and away, leaving those watching him in bewilderment.
As one prominent member of the Dodgers remarked recently: “I don’t remember the last time I saw him square up a ball.”
“I’ve never seen him unable to make adjustments before,” said a scout who watched him take at-bats at American Family Field in Milwaukee. “Right now he just can’t.”
Ohtani’s struggles date back four months, a stretch that has become ripe for second-guessing.
His left knee first began to flare up in early June and quickly diminished him as a pitcher. He posted a 0.74 ERA in his first 10 starts, then a 4.38 ERA in his next four. Despite multiple attempts to reactivate his arm and throw off a mound, Ohtani didn’t pitch beyond July 3. Along the way, he developed tightness in his right biceps.
For a while, Ohtani’s offensive production continued. But that changed midway through August. Ohtani was slashing .294/.390/.558 with 30 home runs in 121 games on Aug. 18. Over his next 49 at-bats, he managed just six hits and struck out 21 times, making outsiders wonder why he wouldn’t go on the injured list to rest his body. Ohtani and the Dodgers finally relented after Labor Day, by which point a minimum stint on the IL would leave him with only five regular-season games to prepare for the playoffs.
Near the end of September, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman acknowledged that Ohtani was not as forthcoming as he could have been about his injuries -- a common trait among some of the game’s best players.
“The communication back and forth has been awesome,” Friedman said then. “The fully sharing exactly how he’s feeling, maybe not awesome.”
In place of that, the Dodgers have leaned on visual cues. The swing that set the wheels in motion for Ohtani’s IL stint occurred in the 10th inning on Sept. 2, when he looked compromised on his final swing and shook his right arm on his way back to the dugout. Most recently, the alarms went off in the sixth inning of Game 2 on Monday, in an at-bat that began with Ohtani showing bunt and ended with him chasing a JoJo Romero sweeper well out of the zone.
Roberts resigned himself to check in with Ohtani the following day. If Ohtani indicated he was ailing, Roberts was ready to give him time off, similar to how he rested Freddie Freeman late in their postseason run two years ago. The Dodgers are in a more compromised position now, but they also have a ready-made replacement in Josue De Paula, the 21-year-old outfield prospect who has looked poised in the batter’s box since making his major league debut on Sept. 11. But despite the Dodgers’ concerns, Ohtani seemingly talked Roberts out of any switch.
“He’s not perfect,” Roberts said. “But in his words, he’s ready to go.”
What Ohtani is dealing with at the moment remains somewhat vague. Roberts referenced his left knee and right biceps, but also his upper body in general. Ohtani said his symptoms “have subdued a lot” since he returned from the IL on Sept. 23 and said he takes “full responsibility” for his slump, refusing to pin them on physical ailments.
It lines up with what the Dodgers’ principal decision-makers tend to believe -- that while Ohtani is compromised, his struggles might have more to do with how his mechanics were impacted by previously compensating for injuries.
“The symptoms,” Ohtani said, “shouldn’t be the reason I can’t hit.”
Dodgers executives have raved about how well Ohtani has fared against the high-velocity machine outdoors and the Trajekt pitching simulator inside. Roberts and hitting coach Aaron Bates have praised his ability to simplify his mechanics, see pitches deep and drive them into the gaps with regularity. In those sessions, they’ve seen the Ohtani of old. Then the game begins, and the best player in the world once again looks helpless.
Results-wise, the gap is monumental.
To Ohtani, it’s much smaller.
“Over the course of this long season, there’s only really a short period of time when my mechanics are completely in sync,” he said through an interpreter on Tuesday. “So it’s really kind of just going back and forth, finding the right parts of the swing and managing just the different parts of the swing. It’s a constant, ongoing process that’s headed in the right direction.”
It was right around this time last year, in Game 4 of the 2025 NLCS on Oct. 17, that Ohtani put together what is widely considered the greatest game ever played, blasting three home runs and firing six scoreless innings to complete a sweep of the Brewers. It represented the apex of his powers, and the memory of it still burns inside Brewers manager Pat Murphy.
“You can’t forget that,” Murphy said.
The Brewers will continue to attack Ohtani carefully, Murphy stressed, as they would a player capable of dominating a game like no one else.
And the Dodgers will continue to believe that version of him is in there somewhere.
“At the end of the day, in this big moment, we’re listening to Shohei,” Roberts said. “We’re going to support the crap out of him and believe in him, and that’s it.”