Dodgers weigh benching Shohei Ohtani for NLCS Game 3

The news broke late Monday night after Game 2, and it is the kind of sentence nobody thought they would read about Ohtani in October.

According to The Athletic's report, Dave Roberts plans to talk with Ohtani on Tuesday's travel day before deciding anything for Game 3 on Wednesday at Dodger Stadium. It is not a done deal. But the Dodgers are even discussing it, and that tells you how bad this has gotten. Ohtani has 3 hits in 20 postseason at-bats, all singles, with no RBIs. He went 0-for-4 with 2 strikeouts in the Game 2 loss and is 1-for-7 with 3 strikeouts through 2 games of the series. Roberts had already moved him out of the top 2 spots in the order and down to 4th or 5th over the last few games. Benching him outright would be the next step.

Talkin' Baseball

@TalkinBaseball_

Shohei Ohtani is in by far the worst slump of his career right now

The power has been gone for a while. Ohtani hasn't homered since August 18 at Coors Field and went homerless over his final 18 regular-season games. He stopped pitching in early June because of a left knee injury, has been dealing with a right biceps problem for weeks, and spent time on the 15-day IL in mid-September. That makes this October a long way from last year's NLCS against these same Brewers, when he hit 3 home runs and struck out 10 in Game 4 and won series MVP. The people who have watched him most closely say they don't recognize what they're seeing now.

Foul Territory

@FoulTerritoryTV

“I’ve seen this man do some inhuman things, some superhuman things, but he is not that guy right now.” @TimNeverett weighs in on Shohei Ohtani’s prolonged struggles at the plate.

A.J. Pierzynski said the same thing on the same show, that Ohtani looks like a singles hitter right now and "doesn't even look right." With a sore knee and a sore biceps already on record, it isn't much of a leap to wonder whether this is physical rather than just a slump. Bob Nightengale went there.

Foul Territory

@FoulTerritoryTV

"I think something's bothering him physically." @BNightengale wouldn't be surprised if Shohei Ohtani undergoes offseason surgery...

If Ohtani sits, the likely replacement is 21-year-old prospect Josue De Paula, which would be his first career playoff start. De Paula has walked twice in 3 postseason at-bats and hit.303 with 27 homers in Double-A. Benching a $700 million superstar for a kid who just came up from Double-A is a big swing. When you're down 0-2 and your best player can't get the ball out of the infield, though, it is a fair conversation to have.

What to watch for: the Game 3 lineup card on Wednesday. If Ohtani is in it, Roberts is betting that 1 swing can flip this series, and nobody has a better track record of that swing than Ohtani. If he isn't, the Dodgers are admitting that their $700 million guy is hurt, broken, or both, and that they have run out of time to wait for him. Either way, his Game 3 props depend entirely on that conversation, so don't bet anything until the lineup is posted.