Shohei Ohtani starts on mound, doesn’t hit as Dodgers beat Mets

Los Angeles– shohei ohtani In this season he played 16 innings without giving any runs. MJ Melendez Wednesday came to bat in the top of the fifth and hit a ground-rule double that ultimately got New York Mets Rider.

Apparently, this angered Ohtani, as he then had four fastballs that were over 100 mph, getting him out of the only trouble he faced all night and leading to another stellar performance for the aspiring Cy Young candidate.

“I can’t work at full strength the whole time,” Ohtani said, speaking through an interpreter. los angeles dodgers‘ Sweep-clinching win 8-2 Over the Mets. “But seeing where the game was at that time, I felt like I really had to go all out.”

Given the 94 mph fastball taken from near the right shoulder three days earlier and the mile-high four-game series in Denver that followed shortly thereafter, the Dodgers kept Ohtani out of the lineup for Wednesday’s series finale. This is the first time he pitched but did not have a hit since May 28, 2021, a year before Major League Baseball instituted “The Ohtani Rule”, which allows pitchers to spend the entire game in the lineup if they also start at designated hitter.

instead, dalton rushing Started at DH and hit a grand slam, putting the game out of reach in the eighth inning. And Ohtani provided another impressive start, giving up just one run while striking out 10 batters in six innings.

In three starts, his ERA is just 0.50.

“It was really good to see him just focus on one thing,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I thought it would be helpful to put all that energy into pitching. The last few outings, I thought he was struggling with himself a little bit at times. But tonight, he was really good.”

Ohtani threw his four-seam fastball 53.7% of the time, his highest so far this season. In his first two starts, only one of his eight strikeouts came on a fastball. However, four of the first five did so on Wednesday. All told, Ohtani took 22 swings and misses against the scrambling Mets offense, his most in a game since 2023. Thirteen of those came off a fastball, a career high, according to ESPN Research.

His four hitters came in the fifth, an inning that began with a pair of walks, followed by Melendez’s RBI double, which broke Ohtani’s 32⅔-inning regular season scoreless streak from last year.

With two on and one out, tommy pham Saw an 0-1 fastball at 100.2 mph and another strikeout at 100.3 mph. francisco lindor Then the first pitch fastball was clocked at 100.1 mph and the second at 100.4 mph, ready to end the threat. In the sixth, Ohtani shut out the team, boasting the diversity of his arsenal on a 97.4 mph fastball, a 71.5 mph curveball, and an 88.1 mph splitter.

Rushing said, “I mean, it’s shohei – other than that I don’t have anything else to say.” “I think it’s nice to see him focus basically all of his attention on what he’s doing on the mound. Not that he wasn’t already one of the better pitchers in the big leagues, but I think he’s definitely one of the best now, when you give him a chance to just worry about pitching. Everybody knows what he can do with the bat, everybody knows what he can do with the baseball. But sometimes. To be able to separate the two, it’s honestly better.”