The Los Angeles Dodgers lost 5-1 to the San Diego Padres on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium. The offense left 12 runners on base and went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position. The chance to clinch a first-round bye slipped away for at least another day.
Shohei Ohtani was back in the lineup for the first time in two weeks. For the Dodgers, what their franchise player looked like mattered far more than the final score.
Manager Dave Roberts liked what he saw.
Roberts on Ohtani’s Return
Ohtani went 1-for-4 with a single, a walk, and two strikeouts. The box score was unremarkable. Roberts looked past it.
“He looked good,” Roberts said. “At-bat quality was good. There wasn’t any chase. He hit the ball hard, just missed a homer. It’s been a while since he played. It felt like he wasn’t sped up at all.”
That last detail matters most. Before going on the injured list, Ohtani’s swing had looked rushed and compromised. He was getting under fastballs, finishing swings with one hand, and showing visible discomfort during a prolonged slump.
Wednesday was different. The timing looked closer to normal. The approach was disciplined. The body language was calm.
“I think if you look back at the last couple weeks when he was active, he wasn’t really getting to that pitch,” Roberts said. “Tonight showed that he’s in a good spot physically.”
The Flyout That Said Everything
Ohtani’s seventh-inning at-bat told the real story of the night. He connected on a 99 mile-per-hour fastball from Padres reliever Bradgley Rodriguez and sent it 384 feet to center field at 103.4 miles per hour off the bat.
Jackson Merrill tracked it down at the wall. It was not a home run. It was his most authoritative swing since early August.
Six weeks ago, that same swing producedvpopups and ground balls. On Wednesday, it produced a drive that had Dodger Stadium on its feet before Merrill could close on it.
The margin between a warning-track flyout and a home run is small. The margin between what Ohtani looked like before the IL and what he looked like Wednesday is not.
Final Word for the Dodgers
The swing was not rushed. The approach was not desperate. The hardest contact in six weeks came in the seventh inning, not the first, which means the body held up across a full game.
Four regular season games remain before October. Ohtani is not all the way back. He does not need to be yet. What he showed Wednesday is that the version of him the Dodgers are getting for the playoffs is a different player than the one they had to shut down.
That is enough. For now.
Dodgers Get Encouraging Shohei Ohtani Update Ahead of MLB Playoffs