Roberts Bets on a Reduced Ohtani in the NLDS

Shohei Ohtani will bat in Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday even though he is not fully healthy and still cannot say what is wrong. The Dodgers are putting him in the first or second spot against Atlanta at Dodger Stadium, first pitch 1 p.m. PT on FOX, and they are asking him to manage a left knee and a right biceps that landed him on the injured list in September.

Manager Dave Roberts is making that bet in public. He said Friday that Ohtani is not 100%, that plenty of October players are not, and that he still expects good things once the lights come on. He also said the club has not seen enough of the healthy version to forecast it.

The Lineup Card Still Has His Name

Ohtani spoke Friday through interpreter Will Ireton, his first session with reporters since before the injured-list stay. He called the bye week productive and said the swing feels smoother. He also drew a hard line around the medical mystery.

I haven’t been able to get a good grasp of the root cause of all this. I think that process is going to happen during the offseason when I’m going to have a little bit more time to be able to address it. But as of now, it’s something I’m just going to have to manage.

Shohei Ohtani, Dodgers designated hitter, Friday at Dodger Stadium

That is the wager in one breath. The four-time MVP still cannot name a root cause, and he is in the lineup anyway because the Dodgers do not have a better bat to write in that slot. Roberts grouped him with first baseman Freddie Freeman and other veterans who are playing hurt, then admitted the difference is the size of the player and the size of the unknown.

Hitting coach Aaron Bates watched outdoor batting practice and said the ball was coming off the bat as well as it has all year. Ohtani lofted a couple of balls off the scoreboard, then faced right-hander Emmet Sheehan and struck out before lining a ball to right. On Wednesday he took three plate appearances against Yoshinobu Yamamoto in a long simulated game. That is not a 95-mph slider from Chris Sale with a series on the line, and Bates was describing contact quality, not October timing.

A.167 Stretch With the Lights About to Come On

The season line still looks like a star. Ohtani finished with a.275 average, a.377 on-base percentage, a.512 slugging percentage, 30 home runs, 81 RBIs and 11 stolen bases in 135 games, 30 homers and an.889 OPS across 523 at-bats. Through his first 110 games he had hit.296 with 26 homers and a.952 OPS. Then the body showed up in the box score.

Over the 24 games before the injured list, he hit.198 (19-for-96) with a.690 OPS and 34 strikeouts. A 14-game slice inside that skid produced seven hits and 22 strikeouts. By the time Los Angeles finally shut him down, he had gone without an RBI since August 18, the longest such drought of his career, and he was 2-for-26 in a seven-game stretch.

THE THREE WINDOWS THAT FRAME THE BET

Those last 15 games, taken from his official splits, were 10-for-60 with a.265 on-base percentage and a.233 slugging percentage. He came off the injured list for the final five regular-season games and went 5-for-21 (.238) with one double, one RBI, eight strikeouts and one walk. In his last 18 games as the designated hitter he went 11-for-70 (.167 in the 15-game official split;.157 across those 18) with no homers and one RBI. Roberts noticed him pressing at the end, trying to cram timing back into a short runway.

General manager Brandon Gomes said earlier in the week that everything felt great physically and that the swings after the return were in a good place. Roberts, on the same call, said he expected the best version of Ohtani from the past two months and called that a low bar given the injury. Friday he would not go further than hope.

The Mound Has Been Empty Since July 3

The hitting problem did not arrive alone. Ohtani has not pitched since July 3, a 6-inning start against the San Diego Padres in which he struck out nine and left with the left knee still barking. He finished the abbreviated mound year 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA, 95 strikeouts and 26 walks in 85 2/3 innings with a 1.79 ERA across 14 starts. He said during the injured-list stay that he already knew he would not pitch again this season, so he used the downtime to think about the swing.

FROM THE LAST PITCH TO GAME 1

1. July 3, 2026: Makes his 14th and final start, six innings and nine strikeouts against San Diego, then stays off the mound.
2. September 8, 2026: Injured-list clock is later backdated to this date after weeks of sitting, returning, and sitting again.
3. September 11, 2026: Placed on the 15-day injured list, the minimum for a two-way player, his first IL stay as a Dodger, after a biceps flare on a swing.
4. September 23, 2026: Activated and bats second against the Padres, singles in his first at-bat, finishes 1-for-4.
5. October 3, 2026: Listed to hit in NLDS Game 1 at Dodger Stadium, 92 days after that last pitch.

Roberts said in early September that if it were a playoff game the next day, Ohtani would be in the lineup, and that 14 days off would put him in a much better place, if not 100 percent. When the club activated him, Roberts put him at an eight or a nine on a 1-to-10 scale after a five when he went on the list. Friday’s version of that scale was simpler. He is not 100 percent, and he is batting.

Keeping a two-way player on the 15-day list instead of the 10-day position-player list was the tax for the unicorn roster spot. The club waited on that tax until the biceps told them, on a Monday swing, that a few days off would not be enough. Batting-practice carry in a quiet park is a thin substitute for the live pitching he missed while that clock ran.

Why Atlanta Gets a Different Ohtani

The Braves already beat this Dodgers lineup in the regular season, taking five of six meetings and holding Los Angeles to a.580 OPS in those games. They now get a designated hitter with no home runs in his last 15 games, no postseason innings on the mound, and a manager who will not forecast the bat. That is a different problem than the Ohtani who posted a.952 OPS through 110 games and still had a 1.79 ERA attached to the same roster spot.

Atlanta’s offense was weaker against left-handers, a.696 OPS versus.730 against right-handers, which is one reason Roberts gave Tarik Skubal the ball for Game 1 instead of Yamamoto. The other reason is rest math. Skubal is comfortable on four days, which lines him up for a potential Game 5 and leaves Yamamoto, who has not started on short rest in his career, for Game 3 in Atlanta on Tuesday.

Ohtani will not change that pitching plan. He will only change how Walt Weiss’s staff can attack the top of the Los Angeles order. A DH who has been chasing timing for five games, then five more days of simulated work, is a different target than the man who hit an opposite-field double off a 103-mph fastball from Mason Miller after the IL return. One loud contact against a closer does not wipe a month of empty slugging.

Eight Homers Last October, Zero in His Last 15

The other half of Roberts’s bet is the resume. In 33 career postseason games Ohtani has 11 home runs, 24 RBIs and a.940 OPS in 129 at-bats. In 2025 he hit.265 with eight homers, 14 RBIs and a 1.096 OPS in 17 games and won NLCS MVP while the Dodgers won a second straight title. In 2024, on a surgically repaired elbow that kept him off the mound, he still posted a.767 OPS with three homers in 16 games.

That 2025 burst is the picture the club is selling to itself. It is also a year old. Last October he was a two-way threat who started four postseason games, went 2-1 with a 4.43 ERA in 20 1/3 innings, and still mashed. This October he is a designated hitter coming off a.498 OPS in his last 15 games, and the four MVP awards (2021, 2023, 2024, 2025) do not swing for him. Pete Crow-Armstrong is the likely National League MVP; Ohtani’s year was good, then it was injured, and the trophy race moved on.

Roberts is not wrong that October has paid this player before. He is guessing that the same man, at 32, with a knee and a biceps he cannot explain, still has that gear. The 2025 tape says maybe. The last month of 2026 says the gear is in the shop until winter.

Skubal Starts Game 1 Against a Short-Handed Staff

If Ohtani’s bat is the open question, the pitching mismatch is not. The Dodgers had a first-round bye as the No. 2 seed. Atlanta, the No. 3 seed, just burned starters and Sale in a Wild Card series against the Phillies. Game 1 on Saturday is a likely bullpen game in Game 1 for the Braves, with left-hander Brent Suter a candidate to open and Grant Holmes, who threw 28 pitches over two innings on Thursday, lined up to follow.

PROJECTED ARMS FOR THE FIRST THREE GAMES

Sale is 37. He started Wild Card Game 1, then recorded the last four outs of the clincher on Thursday, and he has not started on four days’ rest since April. If he can give Atlanta a few innings on Sunday, he stays in play for a Game 5. Mahle felt an abdomen tweak before his seven-inning Wild Card start and is still expected for Game 3. The Dodgers can send Skubal, then likely Snell, then Yamamoto, with Tyler Glasnow behind them. Ohtani used to be the fifth name in that sentence. He is not, for 92 days and counting.

That is the hidden side of the same bet. Los Angeles can survive a quiet Ohtani series if Skubal and company throw as billed. It cannot survive a quiet Ohtani series and a short start in the same night, which is why a compromised DH still occupies a lineup card the rest of the roster is built around.

What the Dodgers Need Him to Manage

Ohtani said he can tell how he feels from his setup even without a pile of at-bats, and that he wants the postseason atmosphere so he can recalibrate. He also said he still has little tweaks to make before Game 1. Gomes and Roberts have spent a week saying the body is better. The player is saying the diagnosis is a winter job.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The lineup: Ohtani is expected to hit first or second in Game 1 and in every game he can take.
• The pitching: He is shut down from the mound for the rest of 2026, a call he said he had accepted during the IL stay.
• The recent bat: Zero home runs in his last 15 games and one extra-base hit in his last five.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The diagnosis: No public root cause for the knee and biceps, and no timeline for a fix beyond the offseason.
• The October version: Roberts will not forecast the performance because the sample after the IL is five games of mixed contact.
• The durability: How many games in a best-of-five he can take if the biceps or knee flares again.

The Dodgers are two-time defending champions, the No. 2 seed, and they are opening a best-of-five with their Trade Deadline left-hander on the mound and their four-time MVP in the order. Ohtani will stand in against a Braves staff that has to improvise Game 1, and he will do it with a swing he calls smoother and a body he cannot explain. Saturday at 1 p.m. PT is the first test of whether that is enough.