LAS VEGAS — When the Dodgers and Cubs met at the beginning of August, it was notable that Cubs center fielder Pete Crow-Armstrong was even challenging Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani for National League most valuable player.
Ohtani was on a streak of three straight MVP seasons and working to return to the mound after what was expected to be a temporary shutdown around the All-Star break. So even as Ohtani and Crow-Armstrong traded leadoff home runs, it felt like a peak in a race that could tilt in Ohtani’s favor in the final months of the season.
Tilt it did — the other way.
Ohtani never did return to the mound, and his offense suffered as injuries mounted down the stretch. Crow-Armstrong never cooled off and ran away with the MVP, officially claiming the award Thursday in a unanimous vote. He was the 11th unanimous NL MVP in the history of the award. Ohtani finished second.
Ohtani’s two-way skillset is so unique that any time he pitches and hits for an entire season, he’s practically guaranteed the MVP — he won the award twice with the Angels in 2021 and 2023 before winning two with the Dodgers in 2024 and 2025. But the Dodgers’ first attempt at guiding him though a full two-way season crashed and burned in the wake of a lingering left knee injury and recurring right biceps issue.
The Dodgers are set on having Ohtani return to two-way duties in 2027. But now they’re left to diagnose what went wrong this year and figure out how to avoid the same pitfalls moving forward.
“The good thing is, it’s going to be a normal offseason,” general manager Brandon Gomes said, referring to Ohtani’s health status. “And as we get deeper into the offseason, understanding what our roster looks like, and then having those conversations of, ‘How do we best lay this out to set everybody up to be as good as they can come October?’
“And that’s always the goal. I know it’s so boring and we pound it into the ground. But I think for Sho in particular, it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s get back to feeling 100%, have the normal offseason, like you’re going to have, and then have that conversation based on what our team looks like and rotation and all of that.”
The Dodgers have made clear that plotting Ohtani’s pitching plan will be a collaborative effort that will involve conversations throughout the year. But they have plenty of options for how they could manage his workload.
They could pull him from the batting order on days he pitches, and/or build in more full recovery days after his starts on the mound. They add more days in between his pitching starts. They could have him lighten his pitching load midseason and then ramp up again for the postseason. They could delay his return to the mound.
“I think Shohei’s open to putting the team in the best position to win,” Gomes said. “And I think that is the number one thing that he’s shown over and over again, is that he cares deeply about the Dodgers winning and puts that at the forefront. So I think that’s why these conversations are really important.”
The Dodgers are missing one major piece of information that will affect their path forward: the length of the 2027 season.
Privately, baseball agents and executives’ estimates span a wide range of possibilities, from a sub-100-game season, to a late start but no games lost. It will remain ambiguous well into the lockout, which owners are expected to impose when the current collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 1.
So, pitchers across MLB will have the unenviable task of planning their offseason buildup without the clarity of an opening-day target.
In that kind of environment, it could be in Ohtani’s best interest to put off a pitching ramp-up at least until the lockout ends and the season schedule is set. But he and the Dodgers have a little over two weeks to talk through those decisions. Once the lockout begins, teams will be restricted from communicating with the players on their 40-man rosters.
Said Gomes: “I feel strongly that Sho will have himself prepared in the way that he feels is best to go out and dominate next year.”
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