Shohei Ohtani's left knee has been barking since at least mid-June, and now it's serious enough to cost him a start and a trip to Philadelphia. The Dodgers scratched him from his scheduled pitching outing against the Diamondbacks and announced he won't play in the All-Star Game, all because of lingering left knee irritation that flared up again after he first left a game early back on June 11 against the Pirates.
The news broke Friday: Ohtani is out of his start and out of the Midsummer Classic.
Here's the twist that makes this whole thing so Ohtani: he's still hitting bombs. Ohtani served as Dodgers DH in the series opener at Dodger Stadium and led off the bottom of the first with a home run anyway, his 21st of the season and 8th leadoff shot. He was reportedly a little gingerly rounding the bases, but the ball still left the yard.
Shohei Ohtani isn't feeling great but hit his 21st home run of the season anyway! https://t.co/M48imF80mt
This isn't a season-ending scare, at least not yet. According to reporting, Ohtani isn't headed for surgery. Instead the plan is to get the knee drained and likely get an injection to knock down the swelling, buying him time before the Dodgers open the second half on July 17 in New York against the Yankees. Manager Dave Roberts reportedly cited the flight and altitude change to Philadelphia as a reason to shut him down for the break rather than push it.
Ohtani will still DH through the rest of this weekend's series at Dodger Stadium, so this isn't a full shutdown, it's a targeted one. Pitching is the part getting paused; hitting keeps rolling. For a two-way player who's already carrying an unprecedented workload as both an ace and an MVP-caliber bat, managing a knee flare-up by trimming the mound duties while still letting him hit checks out as the sensible middle ground.
For fantasy managers and prop bettors, the read here is pretty clean: don't panic on the bat, but pump the brakes on anything pitching-related for the next couple weeks. Ohtani's power numbers aren't going anywhere, and if the knee responds to treatment over the break, he's ticketed to be back on the mound right when the Dodgers reopen the season against the Yankees. The bigger question is whether this knee issue becomes a recurring theme the rest of the summer, given it's now popped up at least twice in a month.