The Dodgers return home Wednesday night with their National League Championship Series hanging by a thread, down 2-0 and facing a question that would have sounded absurd a month ago: can they afford to keep Shohei Ohtani in the lineup if he is not physically capable of being Shohei Ohtani?
Game 3 against Milwaukee is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET at Dodger Stadium, and manager Dave Roberts was expected to sit down with Ohtani on Tuesday before setting his club’s plan. The discussion is not merely about a star enduring a cold week. Ohtani has gone 3-for-20 in six postseason games, carrying a .150/.261/.150 line without an extra-base hit, and he has not homered since Aug. 18. His last home run in Los Angeles came Aug. 12 against Kansas City.
Roberts acknowledged that the two-way superstar is not feeling right. Ohtani has dealt with a right biceps problem and a left knee issue, has not taken the mound since July 3, and went on the injured list for two weeks in September. He returned for only five regular-season games before October arrived. Roberts said the club needed to determine both what serves Ohtani and what gives the Dodgers their best chance to stay alive.
That is a difficult conversation for a player who was among baseball’s five best hitters through Aug. 18. Since then, regular season and postseason included, he has fallen into one of the game’s least productive stretches. The Dodgers even used him fifth during the Division Series, his lowest spot in a lineup in more than six years. Will Smith has been an even larger hole in the present Dodgers order, and other accomplished hitters around the league, including Atlanta’s Matt Olson and Ronald Acuña Jr., have also struggled in an October environment where hitters collectively own a .213/.295/.337 slash line.
Still, Ohtani’s slide has carried signs beyond ordinary playoff variance. He struck out 39 percent of the time in September, the second-highest monthly rate of his career. His chase rate rose sharply, and the quality of his contact dropped. Hitting coach Aaron Bates said early in the postseason that Ohtani had made progress on the physical side, with the remaining issue centered on timing against changing speeds and deciding when to begin his move.
A late bat against October velocity
The numbers support that assessment. From 2024 through 2025, Ohtani ranked third in the majors against pitches at 95 mph or harder. Before Aug. 19 this season, he hit .280 and slugged .441 against that kind of velocity. Since that date, including the playoffs, he is batting .036 with a .071 slugging percentage.
His lone hit in that span against 95-plus mph heat was a Sept. 24 double off Mason Miller. That is a rough place to lose timing, because October fastballs have averaged 96.2 mph this year as teams lean harder on their best arms in their biggest innings.
The encouraging piece, at least on the surface, is that Ohtani’s swing speed has not disappeared. His bat is still moving at top-end speed. The problem is getting it moving soon enough. He has repeatedly been late to pitches, catching the ball too deep and sending his swing toward the opposite field with too little lift.
Bat-tracking results from October are the weakest of Ohtani’s 24 available monthly samples, dating to mid-2023. His eight-degree attack angle is tied for his lowest mark, well below the roughly 13 degrees he has shown in prior seasons. His attack direction has shifted to six degrees toward the opposite field after generally sitting closer to two degrees toward the pull side. His typical contact point has moved from about 27 inches in front of his body to 22 inches, while his 37 percent late-swing rate against four-seam fastballs and sinkers is his highest monthly figure on record. The major league average is 25 percent.
The evidence was visible in Game 2. In the third inning, Ohtani produced a soft groundout to third on a 94.9 mph Logan Henderson fastball, forced to meet the pitch nearly at the catcher’s glove. A comparison from August is even more striking. On Aug. 13, he drove a 95.2 mph Shane Drohan sinker for a leadoff double at nearly 112 mph off the bat, meeting it 26 inches in front of him. In Game 2, he fouled off a 94.1 mph JoJo Romero sinker from a nearly identical middle-in location after allowing it to travel to within six inches of his body. He later struck out on a low-and-away sweeper.
No one outside the clubhouse can say whether that delay comes from lingering physical limitations, imperfect pitch recognition, or a timing issue that simply has not reset since his return. The Dodgers must decide whether extra work over the next day can change it, or whether the answer will have to wait for the winter.
The De Paula possibility
If Los Angeles concludes that Ohtani cannot get back on time in this series, moving him down in the order may not solve much. The more dramatic alternative is to start Josue De Paula, a rookie with only 11 regular-season games on his résumé, in a game the Dodgers have to win.
De Paula’s limited sample has nevertheless offered an appealing contrast. More than 530 major leaguers saw at least 100 pitches out of the strike zone this year, postseason included. Only one posted a lower chase rate than De Paula. The organization’s No. 4 overall prospect has earned praise for an advanced eye, and Joey Votto took note after the youngster worked a walk in Game 1. De Paula has also drawn scouting comparisons to a smaller, more athletic version of Yordan Alvarez.
The choice is not really Ohtani versus De Paula at full strength. That version of the answer is obvious. It is about whether the Dodgers currently have enough of Ohtani to justify running him out there while their season is two losses from the edge. For the first time in a long while, Los Angeles has to consider whether its best Game 3 lineup might not include its biggest star.
