Those around baseball are signaling the inevitable alarm regarding Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani’s two-way status.
A lingering knee injury has kept Ohtani, a four-time MVP, from pitching over the last month. He’s resisted going on the IL as of yet and has instead remained a full-time DH for the slumping Dodgers.
But there is no projected timetable for Ohtani’s return to the mound, and manager Dave Roberts said this week that any innings they’d get from their 32-year-old global icon moving forward this season would be a “bonus.” There is no indication that the NL West-leading Dodgers would overrule Ohtani and place him on the IL.
“I can contribute as a member of the offense,” Ohtani told reporters. “It’s not as if I’m playing much defense, so if someone were to say that I’m at a high risk [for injury], I don’t think that’s true. I think the possibility of me contributing to the team is higher than the small risk I take by playing.”
And for as sensational as Ohtani has been since his 2021 AL MVP season, the reality is that we must prepare for the potential end of his “unicorn” days.
How much longer will Shohei Ohtani be a two-way player for the Dodgers?
Considering that he’s under contract through 2033, the thought of Ohtani’s pitching being limited moving forward is unfortunate. We can hate the concept of super teams all that we want, but the odds of us seeing a two-way talent anywhere close to Ohtani's caliber in the foreseeable future are incredibly low.
Statistics only tell part of the story, and they’re arguably irrelevant to Ohtani’s story. He was always running on borrowed time not only because of two previous elbow surgeries, but because he’s a 32-year-old with an extensive hitting and pitching workload dating back to his days as a teenager in Japan.
But the most important thing for the Dodgers to keep in mind is that they’ve already won two titles with Ohtani. So even if his two-way days are nearing the end, at least those rings justify the deal that they gave him.
What have we said before? Winning cures all ailments, and a championship makes it easier to stomach the back half of a contract not going as planned. That’s why Alex Rodriguez’s second contract, the one he signed after the 2007 season, is never called one of the worst in baseball history. The Yankees’ 2009 title overpowers the PED-related suspension and tainted legacy.
Remember: Ohtani didn’t pitch for his first year and a half with the Dodgers. This season marks his first as a regular starting pitcher since 2023, his final year with the Angels.
For the sake of conversation, let’s say that Ohtani is purely a designated hitter by 2029, and he’s not a 30-30 threat anymore. Perhaps he’s good enough for roughly 3.5 bWAR, which is right around what David Ortiz averaged over his final seven seasons in Boston. There is nothing nice that we could say to anyone who’d argue that Ohtani didn’t meet the expectations of his contract.
Compare Ohtani’s situation to Aaron Judge or Mike Trout, the latter of whom hasn’t even enjoyed a winning season since 2015. But Judge has had severe injuries derail two of his last four years, and he’s still chasing a championship, partly because he’s a terrible postseason hitter.
So if Ohtani’s two-way days are numbered, then we’ll smile because it happened. Decades from now, he’s the one we’ll be telling our grandchildren about, and for good reason.
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