Shohei Ohtani Just Did Something Nobody Has Ever Done in a Baseball Game.
Leadoff home run on the first pitch. Five scoreless innings on the mound. ERA 0.73 through 8 starts. Baseball is broken.
Shohei Ohtani led off the game with a home run on the first pitch he saw. He then walked to the mound and retired the first nine San Diego Padres he faced. He finished with five scoreless innings on 88 pitches. The Dodgers won 4-0.
This was not a normal game of baseball.
Ohtani is now the first player in MLB history to lead off a game with a home run while also being the starting pitcher in that game. The footnote needs its own footnote.
What Actually Happened
The line, for the record:
- First pitch of the game: leadoff home run
- First three innings on the mound: nine batters faced, nine batters retired
- Final pitching line: 5 IP, 0 R, 88 pitches
- Season ERA: 0.73 through 8 starts
- Final score: Dodgers 4, Padres 0
That ERA is the lowest through 8 starts by a Dodgers pitcher since Fernando Valenzuela in 1981. Fernandomania got a sequel.
The Strategic Genius
This start wasn't an accident. Manager Dave Roberts scheduled Ohtani's outing the day before a Thursday off-day on purpose. Roberts said: "I think it's just another case in point that it's good for us to be mindful of the workload and just not take that for granted."
That's manager-speak for: we have the best player in baseball history on our roster, and our job is to make sure we still have him in October.
The Dodgers are protecting Ohtani's body the way an art museum protects a Vermeer. This was the second time he's batted leadoff while starting on the mound. The first time he didn't homer. Now he has.
The Numbers Behind the Numbers
The leadoff homer was the headline. The five no-hit innings were the headline. But the most quietly absurd stat from this run is what Ohtani's done at the plate over his last seven games:
- 13 hits in 27 at-bats (.481 average)
- 7 extra-base hits
That's a player recovering from a slump by tearing every pitcher he sees in half. While also being the best pitcher on the staff. The slump took roughly 14 days. He spent it figuring out which side of the ball he'd kill people from first.
What This Means for the NL West
The win pushed the Dodgers' lead in the NL West over the Padres to 1½ games. The standings will tighten and loosen all summer. But every time Ohtani does this — and the Dodgers run him out on a workload that lets him keep doing this — Los Angeles becomes the team that nobody in the National League wants to play in October.
The Bottom Line
We are watching the most unusual baseball career in modern history happen in real time, and the league has not figured out how to defend it because there is no historical precedent to defend it from. Leading off with a home run while starting on the mound has never happened. Now it has. Whatever you're doing, the next time Ohtani pitches a Dodgers home game, find a way to watch the first pitch. You're not going to want the story told to you. You're going to want to have seen it.