A season of milestones for Ohtani, with the big one still unfulfilled

In his first season as a member of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Shohei Ohtani has established himself as the center of the franchise’s universe. He thrived underneath the spotlight of his 10-year, $700 million contract. His boost to the financial bottom line made team officials giddy — “well beyond what we imagined,” said the team’s president, Stan Kasten. He responded to a shocking betrayal from his closest confidant with one of the best offensive seasons in MLB history.

And he now has a chance to do the thing by which this entire endeavor will be judged: win a World Series.

“It’s going to really test his patience and discipline,” manager Dave Roberts said recently, “knowing that he’s waited his entire life, essentially, to be in the major league postseason. It’s going to be fascinating to watch.”

Roberts has suggested that Ohtani may become the greatest player in baseball history. “One of one,” the team’s first-base coach, Clayton McCullough, called him. “I don’t see how there is anybody more talented who has ever played this game than him,” said teammate Kiké Hernández. Relief pitcher Daniel Hudson added: “I feel pretty lucky to have a front-row seat for him every night.”

When Ohtani appears at Dodger Stadium, conversations cease, eyeballs widen and cameras click.

No act committed by Ohtani can be considered inconsequential, especially in the past month, as he continued to rehab his elbow and moved toward pitching again. The Dodgers had insisted Ohtani, a two-way player who has been the team’s designated hitter, would not take the mound in 2024 as he recovered from elbow surgery — at least until Roberts, perhaps a bit hopeful, upgraded the goal last month from impossible to improbable. As Roberts told MLB Network radio, “It would be storybook.”

For the past four years, Ohtani has bent the game of baseball to his will. Even this season, despite being unable to showcase his two-way talents, he broke barriers by concentrating on running the bases.

In August, he became the sixth player to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season, then threw a bullpen session the next afternoon.

Twenty-eight days later, he became the charter member of the 50-50 club, in a game in which he was 6-for-6 with 10 RBIs, three home runs and two stolen bases. In November, he could become the first DH to collect an MVP award.

A World Series championship, the ultimate triumph, would require more heroics from Ohtani. The Dodgers won the National League West, but did not collect 100 victories for the first time in a full season since 2018 as injuries wrecked the starting rotation.

By pitching and hitting so well, Ohtani has already redefined the public’s understanding of the limitations of athletic performance. Can he change the postseason fortunes of the Dodgers, beginning Saturday in Game 1 of the team’s division series against the San Diego Padres? Or will he fall victim to the same October spells that have hounded baseball’s model franchise?

When he was with the Los Angeles Angels, they never presented him an opportunity to sniff a wild card, let alone the World Series. In Ohtani’s six seasons in Anaheim, the club never won more than 80 games. The 2023 season encapsulated the futility with a 17-39 collapse after July. Unable to pitch after damaging his right elbow, Ohtani cleared out his locker in the middle of September, left the team and underwent surgery. Free agency beckoned.

In the offseason, Ohtani met with Dodgers officials. The team’s chair, Mark Walter, awakened Ohtani’s competitive spirit when he called his tenure running the club, which included perpetual postseason berths but only one championship, a failure.

A week later, the team’s president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, received a text from Nez Balelo, Ohtani’s agent: “You got him. Shohei’s a Dodger.” The contract was heavily deferred so that Ohtani would be paid only $2 million annually during his 10 seasons. The deal kicked off a $1.2 billion spending spree, including the additions of Orix Buffaloes ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto and right-hander Tyler Glasnow.

The franchise prepared for a banner season: a proliferation of new sponsorships, a reenergized fan base ready to pack the ballpark and a team projected to demolish the rest of the National League.

The giddiness ended hours before the season’s first game.

Walter, the team’s principal owner, had received word there might be a scandal brewing around Ohtani. The initial details were alarming: A federal investigation into a Southern California bookmaker had turned up Ohtani’s name attached to wire transfers worth millions of dollars.

“For six to 12 hours, I wasn’t sure where we were,” Kasten said. “Was all of this going to go away? Like, all of this?”

Dodgers officials spent the subsequent day scrambling. The maelstrom swirled around Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s interpreter since joining the Angels in 2018. Mizuhara operated as more than a work colleague; he was considered Ohtani’s close friend and had become something of a caretaker, with access to the player’s bank accounts. The control permitted Mizuhara to commit, as he later admitted in court, a massive swindle.

In the moment, though, Mizuhara attempted another con. With the season about to begin, Mizuhara told ESPN he had accrued gambling debts without Ohtani’s knowledge and eventually implored his friend to pay them off. The Dodgers accepted Mizuhara’s initial story.

That night, after an opening day victory, Walter called a team meeting. Friedman informed the group that Ohtani had acted as a good Samaritan to help his friend. Mizuhara called himself a gambling addict and apologized. When Mizuhara spoke, no one translated for Ohtani. Ohtani would later say he thought “something was amiss.”

Ohtani met with Mizuhara back at the team hotel. Mizuhara confessed to the fraud. A kinetic chain of panic followed. A crisis communications spokesperson told ESPN that Mizuhara’s initial story was not credible. Mizuhara admitted to the outlet that he had lied. The Dodgers fired him. In the morning, they convened the team again.

“We had to now go to all the players at breakfast, who we had nine hours earlier told this story, and we had to say, ‘Cancel everything we said,’” Kasten said.

Amid the confusion, Ohtani maintained his composure. “The next day, he showed up to the field, and it was like nothing was going on,” Hernández said. “To me, that was like: ‘Wow. This guy. Who are you, man? Is this normal?’”

It took time to suss out everything. At a news conference in Los Angeles on March 25, Ohtani insisted he had “never bet on baseball or any other sport” and called himself “beyond shocked.” Mizuhara admitted to stealing $17 million from Ohtani and pleaded guilty to bank fraud and tax fraud, and is scheduled to be sentenced in December. He faces up to 33 years in prison.

The Dodgers replaced Mizuhara with Will Ireton, a longtime employee who had worked with Kenta Maeda. Members of the organization have suggested Ohtani appears more comfortable with them now that Mizuhara, who acted as a buffer, is gone.

The scandal did not diminish Ohtani’s reputation or moneymaking capacity. The Dodgers will open the 2025 season against the Chicago Cubs in Tokyo. The influx of interest from Japanese sponsors has been “way past anything we imagined, in terms of interest,” Kasten said.

Before Ohtani joined the Dodgers, team officials did not consider him an adroit base runner. His jumps were substandard and his approach was unrefined. Yet, the physical tools were there. On the first day of each series, McCullough conveys big-picture thoughts about running against the opposing team. Then he sits with Ohtani and Ireton to break down each pitcher. Then Ohtani pulls out his iPad. “He’s literally looking at the side view of the pitcher,” Hernández said. “He’s trying to get his timing and little tips that he can get.”

Ohtani finished the regular season with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases. But as he joined the 40-40 club and then inaugurated the 50-50 club, he continued to rehabilitate his elbow. He started throwing bullpen sessions in August. Last month, he was noncommittal when asked if he could pitch in the postseason. “I’m not sure,” he said. But on Wednesday, Brandon Gomes, the Dodgers’ general manager, seemed to shut down the speculation. “We don’t anticipate him pitching in the postseason,” he told MLB.com.

To Roberts, Ohtani will face a crossroads in the playoffs.

“I think it can go one of two ways,” the manager said.

One path, Roberts explained, is the route navigated by former Dodgers Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger in 2017. In the World Series, the Houston Astros preyed upon the overeagerness of the two players, who could not recognize that pitchers would not challenge them in the strike zone. The other path is the one Seager took in World Series MVP performances for the Dodgers in 2020 and the Texas Rangers in 2023. Seager learned to control his at-bats, draw the opponent into his desired zone and take walks if the pitcher refused to engage.

Roberts expects opponents to try to exploit Ohtani’s zeal to astound on this new stage. He wants Ohtani to learn from the example of Seager rather than suffer through similar growing pains. Against elite opponents, Roberts intends to remind Ohtani, selectivity matters as much as aggression.

“He’s the best hitter on the planet,” Roberts said. “In the postseason, people are going to take their chances with the guys behind him — even if it’s Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.”

The Dodgers clinched their postseason berth near the end of a challenging year. Betts broke his hand in June, missed two months and moved out of the leadoff spot to make room for Ohtani. Yamamoto hurt his shoulder, then returned. Last month, Glasnow suffered a season-ending elbow sprain.

In the clubhouse that night, the celebration of playoff-bound players was subdued. A television flashed to a video recorded before a game earlier in the week, a reminder of the impossible dream: On the screen, Ohtani occupied a bullpen mound. He was pitching.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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