After some time off, let’s start the weekend by playing catch-up with various Dodgers news and notes.
Shohei Ohtani had surgery on Tuesday to repair a torn labrum in his dislocated left shoulder. That’s his back shoulder while hitting, making it a bit different than four years earlier when Cody Bellinger dislocated his right shoulder. Ohtani is expected to be ready to hit by spring training and opening day in 2025, but his timeline for a pitching return remains unclear after his elbow surgery in September 2023.
Jack Harris at the Los Angeles Times explored the pitching outlook for Ohtani, with some thoughts from this week’s general managers meetings in San Antonio:
“We’ll see how he gets through this phase and then take it each step by step, because it’s complicated with somebody who’s also hitting,” Gomes said Wednesday at Major League Baseball’s general managers meetings. “So we’re just gonna make sure we’re checking every box to make sure he’s in the best possible position health-wise. And then whatever falls out of that smart, methodical process will be what it is.”
Ohtani’s chances of being ready to pitch on opening day rotation were narrowed during the playoffs when he and the team decided to delay the completion of his rehab until after the season. Entering October, Ohtani was nearly ready to face hitters for the first time since his September 2023 elbow surgery. He’d progressed enough to be throwing bullpen sessions regularly. But wary of overtaxing Ohtani during his first postseason, the team elected to wait until the winter to have him face hitters again. And now his surgery recovery has thrown another wrinkle into those plans.
Links
I meant to share this over a week ago, but I enjoyed this line from Joe Sheehan at his newsletter, the day after Freddie Freeman homered in his fourth consecutive World Series game: “I don’t know where he spent the time between the NLCS and the World Series, but we should all go there once in our lives.”
Freeman this week was a guest on The New Heights podcast with Jason Kelce and Travis Kelce. Among the various topics was Freeman describing blacking out after hitting the walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of the World Series.
“I get to home plate, and Miguel Rojas said, ‘Freddie stop jumping, I don’t want you to get hurt,’” Freeman said. “I looked at him and said, ‘I don’t feel a thing.’ I was just screaming at him.”
Rob Mains at Baseball Prospectus analyzed the Dodgers recent run of success, which fares quite well among various stretches in MLB history, and now includes two championships to go along with regular season success. The Dodgers’ 760-435 (.636) record dating back to 2017 is the second-best since integration, trailing only the 1950s Yankees.
“No team to compile a better record over eight years than the contemporary Dodgers has any living survivors,” Mains wrote. “This is the best team you’ve ever seen, and maybe the best one you ever will.”