The Ohtani Dilemma

DFA him and let the Giants pick him up

But if not that, the first option, so he burns out faster

i think it's pretty obviously no 2, however it's sort of an open secret that ohtani wants to win a cy young so i don't think the dodgers would even say that they are using him optimally this year as much as they are letting him shift his priorities knowing that they're gonna be in the playoffs anyway and how they use him then is really all that matters

letting him mash at the plate all season, keep his arm lengthened out and warm over the season, unleash him as a healthy cy young level pitcher in the playoffs is very obviously the way, but again it's all sort of arbitrary because nothing the dodgers do in the regular season is gonna matter all that much

curious if the two things really are strongly correlated or if he's just having a bad month as most MVP candidates tend to do once in a while. he definitely seemed worn out by the end of the playoffs last year and I did question whether or not they were really using him in the smartest way. hard to say since there's never been a player like him.

I'd also say the second is the way to go. And when you get to the post-season, use him to start and/or relieve as necessary.

He hasn’t been unlucky this season, his expected numbers in 2026 vs 2025 are .383/.258/.491 vs .425/.274/.649 and his barrels and exit velocity are down. However, he has periodically been a slow starter in terms of hitting. And his numbers last season at the end of April were not too dissimilar to this season. But there is the pitching, and he is a year older. I agree that the second option is the best, even if the dream scenario for the dodgers is he wins the Cy Young award and hits 50 home runs as well.

It's funny because in Japan he was the Nippon Ham Fighters' SP and ~Right Fielder~ and he was injured quite often, I've probably posted about his various knee and ankle injuries/surgeries in the past on one of the many Ohtani threads.

The Angels let him play the OF a few times (soemthing like 9 defensive player position innings total across his 4 seasons there) which is a role the Dodgers have yet to allow him to do.

So now we're seeing him as a full-time pitcher/DH and the power-evaporation is real (or he's hurt, which is another very real possibility).

We're ~25% complete with 2026 so to compare his (MLB) career first half splits are .285/.374/.594 which includes his this season's .241/.374/.418 ... he'll need to have a monstrous May/June to even sniff his (MLB) career splits.

It's also unfortunate that Murakami and Imanaga are both having excellent seasons and nobody outside of Japan or deep fantasy nerds even know who they are.

Even in his dual SP/DH role Shohei is trailing both of those players in bWAR/fWAR significantly, as well as his teammate Yoshi.

I don't know why this wouldn't be #1 unless there are ailment/fatigue issues. It's probably what he wants and he's been more valuable just as a hitter than all but three of their position players.

That's basically the premise of the poll, that there may be a fatigue factor that diminishes him as a hitter when pitching full-time. If you track his bWAR as a hitter vs. IP:

2021 - 4.9/130
2022 - 3.4/166
2023 - 6.1/132
2024 - 9.0/0
2025 - 6.6/47
2026 - 3.2/150 (projected)

not really sure but just to bring up some stuff that hasn’t come up in this discussion (i don’t think):

it’s too early (imo) to judge his hitting this year. hitters, even great ones, go through bad stretches all the time, and ohtani is under a microscope. even with the bad start this year, the lack of power, he has 121 wRC+, still walks a lot, .374 OBP

looking beyond the current year, in 2021-23 ohtani pitched at least 130 innings while also hitting in most games. his power didn’t seem to suffer in those 3 seasons (124 HRs, an ISO above .300).

also, again going back to the short sample, even in those 2021-23 years where he pitched a lot and hit (with power) a lot, he had similar stretches. for example, march/april of his 2022 season,)

I agree that it’s still a small sample size. He’s also 31, obviously.

My fear is if his DHing becomes part of his Cy campaign story if it's close between him and say Shota/McLean/Misiorowsky/Sanchez.

Like, ooh that's nice but 100% shouldn't factor into Cy voting at all.

Also that 6-7 day rest that the Dodgers staff gets (when fully staffed and healthy lol).

For example, I believe Shohei's current innings tally isn't quite at the qualifying mark for awards/category leadership. Right now pitchers need ~42+ IP to qualify for that recognition and he's only at 37IP.

He hit 55 HRs last year, 3rd in MLB. As of 5/11/2025, he had 12. As of today he has 6, tied with Ildemaro Vargas, Carter Jensen, Wilyer Abreu, et al. 5 of those were in a 9 day stretch in early April.

Way back to the OP that Clem referenced, my issue isn't that Ohtani isn't a valuable hitter or doesn't get on base, just calling out his power drying up in the midst of this chilly spell.

basic question, but when you consider his results so far as a hitter and a pitcher, and then add in the factor of injuries (as a DH only, vs pitching), what is he more “valuable” at on a game-by-game basis - hitting or pitching?

pitchers get injured more frequently (59% of all DL stints in 2023) and more severely (longer stays on DL; 71% of total DL days in 2023) source

just throwing that out there, because i hadn’t seen recent hitters vs pitchers injury data in a minute i don’t think

but the ‘ohtani dilemma’, i guess, is that a pitcher injury for him isn’t the same as other players, because he might still be able to play as a hitter only (at a very high level, like last year).

whereas, a “hitter injury” for him seems likely to knock him out for pitching as well.

sorry i know i’m just retreading basic “whoa this ohtani situation is pretty complicated” territory that major fans explored many years ago

as a not-dodgers fan I just want to see them let him run wild, though option #2 is definitely the smartest from the team perspective if they think it’ll limit his injuries

(we should talk about Cal Raleigh at some point too)

Looking up his career splits seemed like an obvious thing to do:

As a DH: .280/.374/.578
As a P: .197/.300/.426

But the PA made it clear that didn't mean anything: 4,382 as a DH, only 70 as a pitcher. I guess he pitched a few games early in his career where he didn't DH, then that stopped. What I wanted to get was a comparison of him on days when he just DH'd vs. games where he pitched and hit.

I've wondered about that too - what's his slash line on days that he's pitching? as impressive as it is to see him do both in a game I can't imagine it's as good as his line on days he's not pitching, though honestly idk how to even look that up

Someone must have compiled that...If you found out that there was only minimal difference--DH/P hitting stats vs. just-DH hitting stats--then I'd be inclined to move my vote to #1. Although you'd have to consider long-term wear and tear.

Obviously the Angels and now the Dodgers track that, so my guess is the difference is minimal. I don't know how that jibes with the WAR/IP numbers I posted above--the pattern seems clear there (allowing for the small sample size this season). It's a...dilemma!

if you look under the hood at his hitting numbers they're all going in the wrong way so far this year -- his avg exit velocity, max exit velocity, barrel percentage, hard hit rate are all their lowest since 2019. his bat speed is down for the second year in a row, his ground ball rate is up. you could look at all that and wonder if the aging curve is hitting him, it's prob worth asking

however, you could also view it other ways if you want. his BABIP is currently at a career low. his home run/fly ball rate (percentage of fly balls that turn into homers) is insanely low for his standard -- the last three years he was running rates at or above 30%, this year he's at 15%. even w/ some of the batted ball metrics dipping, it's definitely not enough to explain his HR/FB being halved, that's just a luck thing.

there's some odd stuff if you look deeper that i'm not sure is explainable beyond just the ebbs and flows of a hitter's career. his pull rate is super high right now -- last year he pulled 46% of balls while hitting 37% of balls to dead center; this year it's 55% and 23%, respectively. that feels like something he could easily straighten out (so to speak)

personally i think there is prob some tinkering he has to do at the plate to recalibrate some of these metrics, aside from him just being obviously unlucky w/ the home run/fly ball rate. a lot of shasta's handwringing over his power can be attributed simply to that. his career HR/FB is 27%, again he's at 15% this year, if he was even at like 24%/25% he'd have a few more homers and there would be less cause for alarm

perhaps the most interesting stat given this convo is this: statcast measures "fast swing rate," which is how often a batter is swinging his hardest. there's evidence both from statcast and more colloquial sources (talking to hitters etc) that batters are not swinging their hardest every single time, that there is some strategy in throttling your swing speeds depending on situation, pitcher, etc. there is three years of fast swing rate data available, here is what it says for ohtani:

2024 - 65%
2025 - 62%
2026 - 49%

i think my conclusion here is that everyone is to some degree right -- you can find evidence of age based decline if you want to see it, but there's also pretty strong evidence of pure bad luck, and evidence that he is modulating his effort at the plate from a swing perspective, for whatever reason. perhaps he's feeling his age, perhaps it's to save more energy for pitching etc. shasta is *probably* right that his stats this year will fall below career norms, however there's also enough luck stuff going the wrong direction that if he rips off a month or two or a whole second half of looking like babe ruth again no one should really be surprised

Can’t home run/fly ball rate dropping be attributed to things other than luck, like just a lot of driving breaking pitches into the ground because he’s misjudging them or getting fooled more often?

Sorry, I see you were talking about home runs that turn into homers, my bad

yeah, exactly. from what i've always heard -- and this is more often brought up in relation to pitchers -- HR/FB rate is subject to big swings in variance in small samples. i.e. a pitcher can have a run of starts where a handful of balls that may have died at the warning track become homers, thus jacking up the pitcher's ERA even tho nothing has necessarily changed about the pitcher's ability

for reference, here are the hitters this year running HR/FB rates north of 29% (where ohtani has been the last 3 years):

ben rice, murakami, judge, schwarber, oneil cruz

here are the hitters running HR/FB rates in the 15% range, which is where ohtani is this year:

ildemeldo vargas, dillon dingler, spencer steer, carter jensen, josh jung, jake burger

there are other established power hitters in the 15% range right now too -- nick kurtz, julio rodriguez, manny machado -- so it's not insane for a hitter of ohtani's caliber to have a stretch like this. but my overall point would be that altho some of the underlying batted ball metrics do support the idea that his power has decreased, it does not explain him leaving the realm of the first group and entering the realm of, you know, spencer steer and dillon dingler. i think it would be a pretty safe bet to assume that ohtani is still much much closer to the first group and will soon return there

it makes sense that his greatest hitting season is the one where pitching wasn't a remote possibility, though i think it's pretty likely this season he corrects course enough to hit somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 HR. i still might be a bit worried if i was a dodgers fan, though their divisional competition down in SD might have a bigger issue with Fernando Tatis hitting like the poor man's Luis Arraez.

By the way, the fourth option isn't just a joke; I'm making fun of myself there...I'm always willing to own up to my most egregiously boneheaded posts of the past (I bring up my vote for Bellinger over Judge more than often than anyone), so I still think about this post:

shohei ohtani alert

Yes, I wrote that.

well that swing looked pretty good

he's back!

Tonight's game--seven shutout innings, 4 hits, 8 K, 2 BB, didn't hit--makes me realize I goofed up on the third option, which implies he's sitting out 40+ games. It should have been: regular turn in the rotation (not hitting) + DH'ing the rest of the time. I think that's what it comes down to:

1) full-time hitter, spot starter (no more than 12-15 starts for the year)
2) regular starting pitcher who doesn't hit, DH the rest of the time

With either one, you work in 5-10 off-days over the season.

Or to put it another way: between those two options, you're trading 15 games of Ohtani the hitter for Ohtani the pitcher (and he never does both in the same game).

Not sure if you caught it but Ohtani is not only dropping out of the batting lineup on pitching days but also the following day.

so if the dodgers are on a 6 man rotation, that's theoretically 162/6 = 27 starts with 162-(27*2) = 108 games at DH.

and don't forget that the Ohtani rule (Rule 5.11(b)) is much less advantageous than when he was doing the SP/DH with no days rest for that moment in time.

"In the event the starting pitcher will bat for himself, the player will be considered two separate people for purposes of Rule 5.11(a). In such cases, the manager should list 10 players on his team’s lineup card, and this player should be named twice -- once as the starting pitcher and once as the Designated Hitter. Thus, if the starting pitcher is replaced, he can continue as the Designated Hitter (but can no longer pitch in the game), and if the Designated Hitter is replaced, he can continue as the pitcher (but can no longer hit for himself). If the player is simultaneously replaced both as a starting pitcher and Designated Hitter, he cannot be replaced by another two-way player filling both roles as separate people (this can be done only once on the initial lineup card by identifying that the starting pitcher will bat for himself)."

So that would be much closer to option 3 as originally posted.

Apropos of nearly anything, there's a 19yo kid in the A's farm that was signed as a SP/2B/DH:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=morii-000sho

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I didn't think that would win...If it were your half billion or whatever, would you feel differently?

it's not and will never be my money! i don't care about 'efficiency'!

let the guy do shit we've never seen before!

i mean even if you're a dodgers fan . . . you've just won two straight titles, don't you want to see one of your players do completely unprecedented things, even at the risk of a third?

I didn't make it clear enough, but that's how I conceived the question--the implication that you're the manager at least, if not the owner.

it's not really anyone's half billion I mean it's all getting paid in like 2036 or whatever by which time the current manager/GM likely won't be in place anyway

understandable, but . . . we're fans, we shouldn't be taking management's side as to extracting maximum financial value from him

let us extract all the conceivable awesomeness instead

I interpreted the question the same way as clem though - how best to use the guy for max value is the dilemma, not what you personally want the Dodgers to do with him

It just seems like a non-question if you don't approach it strategically--if you're a fan, sure, you want him out there every inning x 162. Anyway, my fault for not making that clear.

no worries <3

I want ohtani to manage himself which means something between option 1, 2 and 3. I like his current M.O. of changing thr type of player he is every year. We're already living in the best timeline

And Ohtani/Dodgers kind of resolved this for us with the 31 year old Ohtani not hitting while he's pitching and taking a day off after.

I did vote option 1, for much the same reasons as Mookie. A realisation I’ve had as the years go on is that I’m lucky to have got into baseball when he’s playing, because legitimately we’ll never see this in our lifetimes again. I’ve tried so many times to explain to non baseball people how rare it is that he does both, and does both at the level he does it. Can’t really think of an equivalent in another sport. So yeah, both as much as he can for as long as he can, cos nothing is guaranteed in baseball (except the contracts).

Thought about this some more, and I think even as a fan, I wouldn't go for #1. I want to see Ohtani be a really effective two-way player for as long as possible, maybe even till he's 40, and I don't think that'll happen unless the Dodgers do what they're doing this year and take a more measured approach. Maybe that means 35-45 HR instead of 55, but taking a full turn in the rotation. I like the idea of not hitting when he's pitching, not pitching when he's hitting, and 10 games where he rests.

the closest equivalent in another sport would be the occasional NFL player who might've contributed at both cornerback and wide receiver, but the nature of that game is so punishing that it was more a curio, like Deion Sanders having the equivalent of a third string receiver's seasonal production over the course of his entire career (most of it appearing in one season w/Dallas).

Bo Jackson before he got hurt.

i’m not sure that i voted! i didn’t have a strong opinion

but it strikes me that another thing against trying to deploy him ‘strategically' (cutting his starts at either pitcher or hitter) is, even with that, he might just get hurt anyway in some silly way. he could slip in his shower. he could get run over by a giant roll of tarp. baseball is weird, injuries are weird. or, you could let him play as much as he wants and he’ll somehow never get injured again. who knows

i’m not sure that i voted! i didn’t have a strong opinion

this is my response to nearly every ilx poll reveal

he seems to be hitting now

oh and his ERA is 0.74 lmao

I wouldn't be surprised if Ohtani was just up for a new challenge, winning MVP's had gotten a bit too easy, but winning the Cy Young AND MVP, now *that's* a challenge.

bWAR is 5.2 after yesterday's start. His FIP is 2.41, so his fWAR is probably a lot lower, but still.

4.5 on fangraphs, in first place by a lot

I wouldn't be surprised if Ohtani was just up for a new challenge, winning MVP's had gotten a bit too easy, but winning the Cy Young AND MVP, now *that's* a challenge.

it's sort of been trickling out thru baseball insider types that ohtani wants to win the cy this year, there was also this quote from a likely source before the season --

"He wants a Cy Young," Dodgers backup catcher Dalton Rushing said. "He wants a Cy Young, and you can tell with the way he's carrying himself here recently."

i got news for you shohei, i ALSO want the cy young

*walks big*

He may have picked the wrong year with Sanchez and Misiorowski.

5.2 projected over a full season = 13.6; for post-1900, that would be the fourth-highest figure ever.

1. Walter Johnson - 16.6 (1913)
2. Walter Johnson - 15.4 (1912)
3. Babe Ruth - 14.1 (1923)

Post-integration, it'd be the highest ever.

(He'd knock Dwight Gooden out of the fourth spot--always good to remember how off the chart Gooden's '85 season was.)

cody bellinger: 2.2 fWAR
aaron judge: 2.2 fWAR
shohei ohtani: 4.5 fWAR (2.3 hitting + 2.2 pitching)

Post-integration, it'd be the highest ever.

i love baseball and stats and understand how good all these white guys were, but would be fine with making post 1947 stats the norm and making pre-1947 stats for nerds only

From Ruth to '47 is kind of a grey area for me...Ted Williams starts in '39, Musial in '41, Spahn in '42; I know they're exceptions to the rule, but they played for so long and at such a high level, well into the Mays-Mantle-Aaron era, that I'm not ready to cast aside that window so readily. (I find it relatively easy to relegate pre-Ruth stats to the corner; it doesn't really seem like the same game absent the HR.) There are others who bridge the early '40s and late '50s that blur the line for me.

I think that pre-integration players still would have been stars in an integrated league. The difference in ability between star players and average/replacement level players was a lot bigger than it is now (i.e. there was a larger standard deviation in player's abilities), so the truly great players would have remained great. But the league average players would have been borderline major leaguers, and the replacement level guys wouldn't have been able to stay in the league.

I think that pre-integration *star* players ... that's the key distinction I was trying to make.