The Los Angeles Dodgers have been lucky enough to enjoy the talents of Shohei Ohtani for three seasons, but 2026 was the first that he started as both a hitter and pitcher.

Ohtani unleashed a 9.0 bWAR in 2024 — his first season in LA — en route to winning his third MVP award while not pitching at all throughout the season. In 2025, he slow-played his return to the mound and had a 2.87 ERA across 47 innings of work (and another 20.1 frames in the postseason with a 4.43 ERA). He won his fourth MVP and third in a row.

After a Cy Young-caliber first-half of 2026, pitching to the tune of 1.79 ERA across 85.2 innings, a nagging knee injury that he revealed bothered him more as a pitcher than hitter removed him from the rotation for what turned out to be the rest of the season.

To that point offensively, Ohtani looked like he was ready to earn yet another MVP award, hitting .293 with an OPS of .953 and 22 home runs over the first half of the season. However, while battling the knee injury and later revealing a bicep injury as well, he hit just .245 with eight home runs after the Midsummer Classic.

This carried into a postseason that saw Ohtani bat .192 in 26 October at-bats.

Though Ohtani grew up idolizing MLB Hall of Famer Ichiro Suzuki, there is no question that he was well aware of Nippon Professional Baseball legend Sadaharu Oh.

Oh has a world record of 868 home runs belted across 22 seasons with the Yomiuri Giants from 1959-80.

Oh recently spoke on Ohtani's hitting excellence and said via Satoshi Iizuka of Kyodo News that Ohtani's pitching career should be put to rest.

"Personally, I think he should focus solely on batting and challenge himself to see how far he can go," said Oh.

A figure as revered as Oh should certainly carry significant weight in the baseball world, but perhaps Ohtani's definition of challenging himself to the best of his ability includes pitching.

Ohtani stated earlier this season that he prefers to pitch and hit in the same games, but if his injuries start to get the best of him again in 2027 — injuries potentially caused by the extra wear and tear of pitching — it is worth considering what lengths the team will go through to save a bat as integral as Ohtani's.

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