A month ago, Dave Roberts was asked if the Dodgers’ hope was for Shohei Ohtani to be back in the team’s pitching rotation by May this season.
“I think that’s about right, yeah,” the manager responded, speaking on Feb. 1 at the club’s preseason fan fest event. “And it might be earlier.”
Fast forward to Thursday, however, and Roberts’ answer to the same question had substantially changed.
While Ohtani, the two-way star who missed all of last season as a pitcher while recovering from Tommy John surgery, has continued to play catch on a regular basis at Dodgers camp this week, the right-hander has not thrown a bullpen session since Feb. 25 — a change in his throwing program that has coincided with his return as a hitter to game action in Cactus League play.
According to Roberts, it has been a collective, and precautionary, decision; intended to prevent the reigning National League MVP, who also underwent surgery on his non-throwing left shoulder this offseason to repair a torn labrum, from over-taxing his body as he prepares for opening day as a designated hitter.
“We just felt that to intensify the bullpens, alongside of the intensity of the games, wasn’t smart,” Roberts said. “So we just wanted to kind of slow-play it.”
But, as a result, the timeline for Ohtani to return to pitching in the majors is now far less clear than it had been entering the spring.
“I just feel, and we all feel, [we’re] just trying to make it a broad time to return,” Roberts said Thursday when asked if May was still the club’s target to have Ohtani back on the mound. “We just don’t know. So I think that when he’s ready … we’ll know. But I don’t want to put any kind of expectation on you guys, or Shohei.”
The development, in and of itself, was not a cause for alarm.
All offseason, the team signaled it would be cautious with Ohtani’s pitching rehabilitation, which has been ongoing since he underwent his second career Tommy John surgery in September 2023.
Their goal has long been to have him at full strength come the end of the season, hopeful of maximizing his tantalizing two-way talents for the stretch run of the regular season and into the playoffs.
“It’s very, kind of, nuanced with him,” Roberts said. “Just trying to make sure that we don’t want to push something we don’t need to.”
Still, given the intense anticipation for Ohtani’s return to two-way duties (and a checkered injury history that has limited him to just three MLB seasons of more than 10 starts as a pitcher), any delay in Ohtani’s throwing program is a notable development.
During the first three weeks of spring camp, Ohtani threw four separate bullpen sessions, in addition to regular sessions of catch play in the outfield. After the fourth bullpen, Roberts remarked on the seemingly “seamless” progress Ohtani was making, saying he was “very surprised how quick it’s gone” given the two surgeries Ohtani underwent in the previous year and a half.
But after that Feb. 25 bullpen — in which Ohtani threw only four-seam, two-seam and cut fastballs while re-incorporating a wind-up into his delivery — Ohtani and the Dodgers decided to “to give him a little respite from the rehab,” Roberts said, “and to slow him down” with his Cactus League debut scheduled for Feb. 28.
“It actually kind of came about through conversation with Shohei, our training staff, the doctors,” Roberts added. “So all of it kind of was all synced up.”
Ohtani has looked sharp at the plate. He hit a home run in his first at-bat of the spring. He has collected at least one hit in all four games he has played. And he took four at-bats in a contest for the first time on Thursday, recording his first multi-hit performance of camp in the Dodgers’ 8-4 win over the Texas Rangers.
“Really good,” Roberts said of Ohtani’s game Thursday, in which doubled in the first inning and singled in the sixth. “Shohei’s in a good spot.”
As a hitter, Ohtani will continue to add to his workload before the team departs Wednesday for its season-opening trip to Japan. He is scheduled to play again on Saturday, then will make back-to-back starts for the first time this spring on Monday and Tuesday.
As a pitcher, however, his timeline to resume bullpens, begin facing hitters or eventually return to regular-season action has become far less certain.
“It does make sense, as he’s kind of really preparing on the offensive side, and given his surgery, and also appreciating the fact that he had surgery on his left shoulder too this offseason,” Roberts said, trying to downplay any larger concerns about Ohtani’s evolving plan on the mound.
“[The plan] is to ramp him back up,” Roberts added. But, “I don’t know when that will be.”
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