Shohei Ohtani skips surgery, will pitch for Dodgers in 2027

The Dodgers held their end-of-year press conference less than a week after getting swept out of the NLCS, and the first thing everybody wanted to know was the state of Ohtani's arm.

That is a big exhale for LA. Ohtani has not pitched since July 3, and he spent the last 2 months of the season and the playoffs dealing with a left knee problem and a right biceps problem. Friedman called it "a little bit of an unfortunate game of whack-a-mole": the knee would get better and then the biceps would start barking. When a two-way guy with an elbow history goes down like that, people start bracing for the word surgery. Friedman said it's not happening for either injury.

Talkin' Baseball

@TalkinBaseball_

Shohei Ohtani will NOT need surgery this off-season. The Dodgers are still planning on having him pitch again in 2027, per @BNightengale

It's easy to forget how good he was before the injuries hit. Ohtani made 14 starts in 2026 and went 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA. He was still a monster at the plate too, hitting.275 with 30 home runs in 135 games and making his 6th straight All-Star team. Then he got shut down as a pitcher, never pitched in October, and the bat cooled off in a big way. His OPS in the playoffs was.631. His career OPS is.948.

That's how the three-peat died. Milwaukee swept LA, outscored them 21-9 and outhomered them 7-1 in the series, and finished it with a 6-4 win in Game 4. Ohtani did hit a 3-run homer in that last game, which snapped a long drought, but it didn't change the result. After the sweep he said he'd "go back to the drawing board" on how he trains and gets treatment heading into 2027.

Then came the other headline from the presser. After a sweep like that, plenty of fans wanted someone on the staff to take the fall. Friedman isn't going there.

Put those 2 answers together and the Dodgers' message is pretty obvious: the problem was health, not the people in charge, and a healthy Ohtani fixes most of it. The question now is whether the drawing-board offseason really lets his body handle the full 2-way workload. If he gets back to the guy who had a 1.79 ERA in the first half, the Brewers sweep looks like a blip. If the whack-a-mole keeps going into spring training, Friedman's going to get asked this all over again.