Ohtani’s title hopes: Can he carry Dodgers to…
There was a lot of hype and speculation on Shohei Ohtani’s potential impact on the Los Angeles Dodgers’ 2024 season when he was signed for a 10-year contract worth $700M.
In his six years with the Los Angeles Angels, Ohtani won two Most Valuable Player awards, the 2018 American League Rookie of the Year award, two Silver Slugger awards and was named to the American League All-Star team three times. He was also named the 2023 World Baseball Classic MVP and helped lead Japan to its third title in the tournament.
Despite all his accolades coming into the 2024 season, Ohtani never made the postseason, never mind won a title, with the Angels and was intent reaching this goal with the Dodgers.
Year 1 has been a rousing success for Ohtani and the Dodgers. Individually, Ohtani recorded a historic season in Major League Baseball, becoming the first player in league history to record a 50-50 season (54 home runs and 59 stolen bases) in a regular season. He also had a career-high .310 batting average and 130 RBI.
He followed that up by helping the Dodgers defeat the San Diego Padres in five games in the NLDS, the New York Mets in six games in the NLCS and the New York Yankees in five games in the World Series.
Ohtani’s postseason debut saw him record 14 hits, three HRs and 10 RBI in 16 games.
Ohtani’s offensive impact was immediate this season and was a big reason for the Dodgers’ postseason success, but expectations have been hampered for next year when Ohtani tore his labrum in his left shoulder, his non-throwing shoulder, on an errant slide in Game 2 of the World Series. He had successful arthroscopic surgery on it on Tuesday.
Ohtani is slated to pitch next season but suffering his fourth major surgery in seven years could be cause for some concern. Ohtani had two UCL surgeries in 2018 and 2023 and bipartite patella surgery to his knee in 2019.
At 30 years old, Ohtani is in the prime in his career, but can he overcome the many injuries that he has faced in his time in the MLB? He still has been in the rehabilitation process of the UCL surgery that he had in his right elbow and the recent surgery to his left shoulder can put his immediate pitching future with the Dodgers at risk.
The upcoming months of Ohtani’s recovery will be crucial on the complete impact that he can make with the Dodgers’ next season and beyond.
Ohtani has shown that he is resilient and that he is able to bounce back from the significant injuries that he had in the past.
During his rookie season with the Angels in 2018, Ohtani fought off the effects of a Grade 2 UCL sprain to his right elbow by treating it with platelet-rich plasma and stem-cell injections after almost a month on the injured list. Ohtani recovered and won the AL Rookie of the Year after hitting .285 with 22 HRs, 61 RBI and 10 stolen bases. On the mound, he had a 4-2 record with a 3.31 ERA and 63 strikeouts
He also bounced back from the UCL surgery that he suffered last year to have his historic 50-50 season along with helping the Dodgers to a World Series victory.
The past shows that Ohtani is resilient and rehabilitates and trains hard to overcome these injuries with historic results. If Ohtani can show the resilience that he had in the past, he should be primed to recover to help lead the Dodgers to another title next season.
