Shohei Ohtani completed seven innings on only 89 pitches — the deepest he’s gone in a start since pitching a shutout on July 27, 2023 with the Angels. Eight strikeouts. No walks. A masterpiece by any measure.
The Dodgers lost 2-1.
His ERA after Tuesday night sits at 0.97 — league-leading, historic, almost incomprehensible for a pitcher who is simultaneously working through a 0-for-17 slump at the plate. Shohei Ohtani is doing things no baseball player has ever done. And right now, his teammates are watching him do it from the dugout with their bats on their shoulders.
The Dodgers have scored just eight total runs in six starts with Ohtani on the mound — and did not score a single run in seven innings against Peter Lambert, a pitcher who had allowed 27 runs in 24 career innings against them entering Tuesday’s game. That sentence should not be possible. And yet.
“It’s just sad that you couldn’t do it when Shohei had thrown the ball really well,” shortstop Miguel Rojas said after the game. Sad. That’s the word. Because watching Ohtani pitch right now — watching him dial up 101 mph in the fifth inning to escape a jam, watching him carve through an Astros lineup with surgical precision — is one of the most beautiful things in baseball. And watching his offense waste it, game after game, is one of the most frustrating.
Ohtani had faced 122 hitters this season without allowing a home run before Tuesday — second-most in all of baseball. The streak ended on a pair of solo shots that wouldn’t have mattered at all if the Dodgers could simply put a run on the board while their ace was still on the mound.
The Dodgers have been held to two or fewer runs five times in their last seven games. This isn’t a blip. This is a crisis. And the cruelest part is that the one man working hardest to carry this team on his back is the same man manager Dave Roberts is keeping out of the lineup on pitching days to preserve his arm.
Ohtani is protecting the Dodgers from themselves. He’s just not sure how much longer he can do it alone.
