PITTSBURGH –– Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani left the team’s 8-6 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates on Thursday with left knee inflammation, but is not believed to have suffered any serious injury and could be back in the lineup as soon as Friday, manager Dave Roberts said.
“Not high,” Roberts said when asked about his concern level with the four-time MVP. “Just wanted to be smart and not push it. So I feel good about him being in there tomorrow.”
While it wasn’t exactly clear when Ohtani got hurt, Roberts said he believed it happened on a stolen base attempt in the fourth inning, when Ohtani broke hard from first on a pitch that wound up being fouled off.
Around the sixth inning, Roberts said he got word from the training staff about Ohtani’s discomfort –– which was in the back of his leg around where the knee meets the hamstring.
At that point, the Dodgers decided to be “proactive,” Roberts said, and remove Ohtani from the game.
When Ohtani’s spot in the batting order came up in the seventh, it was Santiago Espinal who came to the plate as a pinch-hitter.
“We’ll just kind of see how he comes in [tomorrow],” Roberts said, with the Dodgers set to travel to Chicago for the start of a three-game series against the White Sox on Friday. “He’ll get there, do his routine, play catch, push off, land on it, see how it reacts. And then obviously take swings and see how it reacts, too.”
Ohtani’s injury was the second one to force a Dodgers player from Thursday’s game, after starting pitcher Justin Wrobleski exited in the fifth following a comebacker that struck him in the leg.
The team announced that Wrobleski, who was charged with four runs in his 4 ⅔-innings start, had suffered a right hamstring contusion.
However, the left-hander also appeared to avoid anything serious, with Roberts saying he was “very, very confident” that Wrobleski would be able to start in his next turn through the rotation.
“I’ll get some treatment, get the swelling to go down and I’ll be good to go,” Wrobleski echoed. “It’s a little bruise right now, but I’ll be fine.”
Prior to Ohtani’s departure, the two-way star was putting together another banner night.
He led off the game with a walk in the first, then lined a solo home run to right field to open the scoring in the third inning –– giving him his 13th home run of the year, and two in as many nights.
Ohtani then got a two-run rally started in the fourth with a two-out single; beginning the sequence that Roberts believes led to his injury.
With Andy Pages at the plate, Ohtani attempted his steal of second early in the at-bat. Then, after the foul ball sent him back to first, he raced all the way to third on a single Pages hit to left field.
“I haven’t talked to Shohei yet, but my assumption is it was trying to steal second base,” Roberts said. “Obviously, I think that you just gotta be smart on the bases and not take chances we don’t really need to. But if that was the cause, I don’t really know right now.”
Ohtani later scored in the inning on another base hit from Freddie Freeman, able to jog across the plate without a throw coming home.
He took one more at-bat in the top of the fifth, when he drew a two-out walk and was left stranded at first.
Thursday marked the first time in more than a month that Ohtani was playing the day after a pitching start. On Wednesday, he pitched 6 ⅔ innings in a loss to the Pirates, and also had a home run in the ninth inning as a hitter. Unlike his past four trips to the mound, the Dodgers decided not to rest him the day after, a decision Roberts said earlier this week was based in part on the team having just recently had a day off on Monday.
Ohtani’s left leg is the one he lands on when he pitches, though Roberts noted “you could argue that it’s better [being] the landing leg versus the push off.”
Ohtani also has had an injury to his left knee before, undergoing surgery in September 2019 to repair a bipartite patella.
However, Roberts said Thursday’s issue was in a different spot.
“He’s the best player in the world, [so] hopefully he’s okay,” Freeman said. “I have no idea about anything. I just saw Santiago go up there. Hopefully he’s alright.”
The source of Wrobleski’s injury was much easier to pinpoint, as he took a 96.2 mph comebacker from Bryan Reynolds off his leg in the fifth inning before getting tangled with Reynolds at first while covering the base.
Wrobleski immediately bent down in discomfort, then walked off the field alongside a trainer.
“He’s fine,” Roberts said. “He’s just more frustrated with his performance tonight, and wanted to go deeper in the game.”
Indeed, in the at-bat prior to getting hurt, Wrobleski had allowed a three-run home run to Brandon Lowe. And after Reynolds came around to score later in the inning, what had once been a 5-0 Dodgers lead was trimmed to 5-4.
Alas, the team held on to secure its first series victory at PNC Park since 2021, getting a couple of insurance runs from Miguel Rojas in the seventh (on a run-scoring grounder) and the eighth (on a sacrifice fly) before Tanner Scott locked things down with a four-out save.
“It’s always good to win a series,” Roberts said.
Even better when –– they hope –– they were able to avoid two potential injury concerns to two starting pitchers, one of whom is also their most fearsome bat.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
