Steve Webb
CINCINNATI, OH — We all saw it with our own eyes. Shohei Ohtani, gifted with legendary speed, seemed to be legging out a triple in the most casual way possible in Saturday’s loss to the Reds. In fact, the play was a lot closer that it needed to be, requiring Shohei to slide under a tag. “Either this guy has the most accurate baseball clock in history,” surmised play-by-play man Joe Davis, “or something’s wrong.” Now we know that it’s the latter.
According to manager Dave Roberts at the postgame presser after the game, Ohtani is dealing with a hamstring bruise that was sustained when he was hit with a pickoff attempt in the last homestand.
“Our advice to him is just be smart with it,” Roberts said. “I think he was just going to leg out a double and the ball just didn’t get in (to the infield), so he kept running. It is him just managing the hamstring.”
Indeed, the pain might be bothering him more than the superstar has let on. Apart from the triple, Ohtani was hitless in his other three at-bats, including three strikeouts. That was coming off an 0-for-5 performance in the series opener, another loss to the Reds. In fact the triple snapped an 0-for-10 stretch that has seen his batting average dip from .348 to .338 in his last four games. However, Roberts feels like it’s an injury that can be managed at this point.
“Today, it was better than yesterday,” the Dodgers’ skipper said. “We need him in there. We just didn’t want to push it.”
The Dodgers wrap up their series with the Reds on Sunday morning.
