Shohei Ohtani, the largest baseball star on this planet, made his Los Angeles Dodgers debut on Tuesday. Manning DH and batting second in Dave Roberts’ lineup – wedged between Mookie Betts within the leadoff spot and Freddie Freeman within the three gap – Ohtani noticed sport motion as a Dodger for the primary time of their Cactus League matchup with the White Sox at Camelback Ranch in Arizona.
Ohtani’s first flip on the plate got here within the backside of the primary in opposition to hard-throwing Chicago lefty Garrett Crochet. A lot to the frustration of the raucous crowd, he struck out taking care of shedding his helmet on a wild swing earlier within the at-bat. In his second at-bat, he grounded right into a double play that drove within the Dodgers’ first run of the sport.
The 29-year-old Ohtani, usually a two-way celebrity, can be restricted to DH responsibility this season as he recovers from elbow surgical procedure. By 2025, he needs to be again to hitting and pitching – a traditionally distinctive tandem of abilities that allowed him to win two American League MVP awards as a member of the Angels. That September elbow surgical procedure stored Ohtani out of the Dodgers’ first 4 spring-training video games and might imperil his standing for the season-opening Seoul Collection in opposition to the Padres in Korea, which is scheduled for March 20-21. That, nonetheless, is a fluid scenario, and that Ohtani was certainly in a position to be in Tuesday’s lineup is a promising step ahead from the cage work and stay at-bats that had constituted his spring thus far.
Ohtani is coming off a 2023 stroll yr for the Angels during which he batted .304/.412/.654 with an AL-best 44 residence runs and on the mound pitched 132 innings with a 3.14 ERA and 167 strikeouts. Earlier this winter, he inked a report $700 million free-agent contract with the Dodgers, albeit one that features heavy and unprecedented wage deferrals.
Ohtani joined a Dodgers workforce filled with stars, together with his countryman and new L.A. ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Throw within the Dodgers’ latest historical past of regular-season dominance and long term of postseason appearances, and expectations are sky-high for 2024.
