Baseball fans at Petco Park will get to experience the full Shohei Ohtani experience on Wednesday night.
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way superstar is set to pitch and hit on the same day for just the third time this season, manager Dave Roberts told reporters. Roberts has experimented with keeping Ohtani out of the lineup on days he’s pitched this season in an effort to ease his workload after starting the year in a prolonged slump at the plate, and the results have been promising.
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Ohtani enters Wednesday with a 0.82 ERA, the lowest in the Majors. And after back-to-back off days in the final two games of the Dodgers’ series against the San Francisco Giants last week, his bat has started to trend upwards as well. In the five games since, Ohtani has gone 10-for-19 with five extra base hits — including an insane Little League home run against the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday — for eight RBIs with five walks. His OPS has also shot up by over a full percentage point from .767 to .872 in that span.
Roberts told reporters over the weekend that his expectation was that Ohtani would hit during his next start, and reaffirmed that plan once the team was in San Diego.
“I just feel like he’s more energized,” Roberts told reporters on Monday. “I think the couple days off did his body and mind some good.”
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The Dodgers retook first place in the NL West from the Padres with a 5-4 win courtesy of Andy Pages’ clutch ninth-inning at-bat against Mason Miller that scored the winning run from third on Tuesday night. Now with a half-game lead, LA can create some breathing room (albeit not much) against their neighbors to the south with a win in Wednesday’s series finale.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Shohei Ohtani pitching and hitting vs Padres in San Diego showdown
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