The Dodgers are finally getting bodies back on the field, which is normally the kind of update that gets buried in a notes column. Except one name keeps popping back up in the middle of the good news: Shohei Ohtani. His left knee has been barking for over a month now, and even as the roster around him trends healthier, the two-way superstar remains the exception.
That framing lines up with what's been trickling out of Chavez Ravine. Ohtani had a start cut short against the Pirates back on June 11 because of inflammation in the same knee, and the issue never fully went away. It bubbled back up enough that the Dodgers turned Friday's scheduled Ohtani start against the Diamondbacks into a bullpen game instead, and he's now been ruled out of the 2026 All-Star Game in Philadelphia entirely.
Shohei Ohtani's knee remains a bit of a question mark, but overall, the #Dodgers are getting healthier: t.co/4S67fJ2ZM5
The plan now, per reporting out of L.A., is for Ohtani to keep DH-ing through the remainder of the Diamondbacks series before having the knee drained on Sunday, likely followed by an injection to calm the irritation down. It's a maintenance play, not a season-ending one, but it's also not nothing for a guy who's supposed to be doing double duty on the mound and in the box for the next several months.
And that's what makes this whole situation so Ohtani. The knee is clearly bothering him enough to scratch a start and skip an All-Star Game, yet he's still doing this to baseballs on the other side of the ball. He teed off on the very first pitch he saw and put a charge into it, the kind of swing that makes you forget there's a medical staff quietly managing his lower half behind the scenes.
Shohei Ohtani destroys the first pitch he see today!
That swing came days after Ohtani reportedly launched his 300th career home run against the Rockies, a milestone that would headline the news cycle on its own in a normal week. Instead it's sharing space with knee scans and injection plans, which is the running theme of Ohtani's 2026: historic production, wrapped around just enough injury noise to keep everyone nervous.
For a Dodgers team that's otherwise trending toward full health for the stretch run, Ohtani's knee is the one variable nobody can fully control. Fantasy managers and bettors leaning on him as a two-way workhorse should keep an eye on how the Dodgers handle his workload after the injection, especially on the mound, where any lingering discomfort would be the harder role to mask.