NEW YORK — Shohei Ohtani’s swing hasn’t looked right since coming back from the All-Star break.
The Dodgers, however, insist it has nothing to do with the two-way star’s lingering knee issue.
Questions about this correlation have cropped up in recent days, with Ohtani starting his second half in an uncharacteristic slump.
The Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani has been mired in a 7-for-38 slump with no home runs since receiving a lubricant injection during the All-Star break. AP Photo/Frank Franklin II
Coincidence or not, he is 7-for-38 with no home runs since receiving a lubricant injection during the All-Star break to address a left knee injury — one that has prevented Ohtani from making a pitching start since July 3.
Granted, Ohtani has been playing through his knee problem since mid-June. And it hardly seemed to hamper him offensively in the month leading up to the All-Star Game, as the four-time MVP hit .273 with 11 home runs, 21 RBIs and a .987 OPS in the 27 games after the injury originated.
On the Dodgers’ post-All-Star-break road trip, though, the 32-year-old was largely a nonfactor as the team’s DH. He recorded just three extra-base hits, albeit with a double in Sunday’s 8-3 loss to the Mets. He struck out 10 times in 41 plate appearances, while only drawing two walks and driving in three runs. Most notably, he wasn’t impacting the ball with his usual pop.
“The quality of contact since the break,” manager Dave Roberts acknowledged Sunday, “has gone down considerably.”
The easy answer would be to point at Ohtani’s knee injury, which regressed following a Wednesday bullpen session in Philadelphia and continues to leave his status as a pitcher unclear.
But when asked about that theory Saturday, Roberts quickly pushed back, citing the slugger’s insistence to the team’s training staff that his injury is not impacting his mechanics at the plate.
Ohtani doubled against the Mets on Sunday, but he collected only three extra-base hits on the nine-game road trip. AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura
Ohtani has not addressed reporters himself since before the All-Star break.
“I can only go by what him and the training staff is telling me,” Roberts said, while refuting the notion that Ohtani’s knee might benefit from him getting a break as a hitter, too. “Unless I hear otherwise, that hitting compromises his health, then I’m going to keep putting him in the lineup.”
Over a long season, of course, occasional lulls are inevitable.
Only a couple months ago, Ohtani hit just .200 with one home run over a 26-game rut, then immediately caught fire and reestablished himself as an MVP front-runner.
Even now, his .907 OPS on the season ranks sixth best in the National League.
Still, Roberts couldn’t pinpoint a reason for Ohtani’s recent decline.
“I feel like he’s just not squaring the baseball up,” the manager said. “There’s a lot of balls that are just mishit.”
Until that changes, speculation about his knee will persist.
