The argument for benching Shohei Ohtani is considerably stronger than the claim that he's simply in a slump. For nearly two months, Ohtani has been a shadow of his former self, and the underlying numbers suggest his swing is fundamentally out of sync.

With the Dodgers trailing Milwaukee 2-0 in the NLCS, here's the statistical argument for sitting him Wednesday, October 14.

Ohtani's last two months

• Batting average - .200

• OPS - .671

• Strikeouts - 35

That was the Regular season, August 13 through September 27, 2026, excluding postseason. 24 games, 95 at-bats.

His postseason numbers make the picture even worse.

2026 postseason

• At-bats - 20

• Hits - 3

• Batting average - .150

• On-base percentage - .261

• Slugging percentage - .150

• Home runs - 0

• RBIs - 0

• Extra-base hits - 0

• Strikeouts - 7

I'd rather have James Outman out there than Ohtani! At least you know he would run into one occasionally.

Five reasons ohtani should sit

1. He cannot catch up to good fastballs. Against pitches 95 mph and faster, Ohtani has hit just .036 with a .071 slugging percentage since August 19, compared with .280 and .441 before that date. That's one hit against premium velocity during this stretch. EVERYBODY FOR MILWAUKEE THROWS MORE THAN 95 MPH FASTBALLS!

2. His power has disappeared. His last home run was on August 18, and he hasn't homered at Dodger Stadium since August 12. There hasn't been a single extra-base hit in the postseason.

3. His swing timing is deteriorating. His late-swing rate against four-seamers and sinkers has reached 37%, compared with the MLB average of 25%. His contact point has moved significantly deeper.

4. His health remains a concern. Left knee and right biceps issues have led to missed time and may explain why he isn't getting into a proper hitting position. His bat speed is still there, but his timing isn't.

5. The Dodgers cannot afford unproductive at-bats. They trail 2-0 in a seven-game series. Starting someone because of his reputation rather than his present ability to contribute is a gamble when every outcome matters.

Those swing and velocity figures come from MLB's October 13 analysis.

The argument against benching him

Ohtani is still Ohtani. He finished the regular season with 30 home runs, a .275 batting average, and an .889 OPS. A player of his ability can change a postseason game with one swing.

Also, benching him means replacing him with a less experienced hitter, potentially Josue De Paula. That is not automatically an offensive upgrade.

Dave Roberts has now indicated Ohtani will start Game 3, according to MLB's latest report. I believe that is a wrong decision. DISCLAIMER: I also acknowledge that I do not have all the information the Dodgers' brass has.

I would seriously consider sitting Ohtani for Game 3, particularly if his physical condition is still limiting his mechanics. This is not a six-game slump. It's a sustained decline that began in August, with a 24-game regular-season stretch of .200 hitting, a postseason average of .150, and an almost complete inability to handle high-velocity pitching.

The most alarming statistic is not his batting average. It's that he's hitting .036 against pitches of 95 mph or faster. That's the kind of velocity he will continue seeing in October.

I'd rather have a healthy hitter with good timing than a superstar struggling to get his barrel to the baseball. And keeping Ohtani available to pinch-hit gives Roberts another option in a critical late-game situation.

I would be more comfortable if he pulled a Kirk Gibson... and pinch-hit. That's when adrenaline can really take over!

The Dodgers need the best version of Shohei Ohtani, not simply his name penciled into the lineup.

This smacks of pure arrogance, self-centeredness, and delusion! Prove me wrong, Shohei!

Arizona fall league

Eduardo Quintero continues to struggle mightily. He was 0-for-4 last night with 3 STRIKEOUTS AND IS BATTING .174.

UPDATE:

Random Thoughts from an Old Ballwriter’s Couch

by Tony Jackson (Consider joining his Substack page)

I never planned (and I still don’t) to make this a baseball blog. My intention is for it to be a catch-all for whatever mood I happen to be in when I sit down at the keyboard, a platform to share whatever happens to be on my mind at that particular moment. But given where we currently are, deep into the playoffs with two games completed in each League Championship Series, what happens to be on my mind tonight is a whole list of random baseball observations. Maybe I know what I’m talking about, maybe I don’t. But I would like to believe the almost two decades I spent covering the game on a daily basis gives me some level of expertise.

The late David Brinkley once wrote a book called, “Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion.” Well, I suppose everyone is entitled to mine, too.

So, here you go …

The Dodgers are done. That isn’t just me trying to reverse jinx them, even though I do still kind of hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. It’s not just that they are down 2-0 to the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series. A lot of teams have come back from 2-0 deficits in best-of-seven series. It’s more the way they got here.

If you watched the first two games — and particularly Game 2 — the Dodgers seem hopelessly overmatched. The Brewers are younger, hungrier, more energetic and infinitely more entertaining. The Dodgers, who have the oldest roster by average age in all of Major League Baseball, are showing that age. The season is long, and the older a player gets, the more that has to take a toll, both physically and mentally. Also, collectively, the Dodgers seem content to keep taking the same businesslike approach that led them to back-to-back World Series titles the past two seasons, never panicking, never sweating. That approach played well last year when they were down 3-2 in the World Series and the remaining games to be played in Toronto. The Dodgers famously rallied, survived two tension-filled epics and hoisted another trophy, mostly on the shoulders of Yoshi Yamamoto.

This year, though, it comes across as less of an absence of panic and more of an absence of urgency. More to the point, this team hasn’t really produced offensively for the better part of three months now. It’s been a team-wide slump, and every time it looked like they might finally be coming out of it — which, not coincidentally, was every time they played a bad team with subpar pitching — it would prove to be an illusion the next time they ran into a worthy opponent.

At the center of this whole mess is Shohei Ohtani, arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport. He has been battling injuries since July, hasn’t homered since Aug. 18 and has been so bad this postseason (three measly singles in 20 at-bats and seven strikeouts in which he has looked utterly lost) that the big story after Game 2 was manager Dave Roberts saying he would have a discussion with Ohtani about possibly sitting out Game 3.

The big story from the off-day workout, though, was that Ohtani will not sit out Game 3. In defiance of all logic and reason. And for all the media covering this team, there doesn’t seem to be much reporting on the actual reason why, although I would speculate it could be either:

• Benching him would seem like singling him out, because nobody else is hitting, either;

• Roberts has been told by the front-office poobahs that Shohei will be in the starting lineup, but that doesn’t make sense because one would assume the front office still wants to actually win; or

• The Dodgers (and maybe this is me just being a crazy conspiracy theorist) are getting pressure from MLB, Fox Sports or possibly even their own marketing department to keep Ohtani front and center because he is their most globally marketable player.

The official story is that Ohtani told Roberts he has been working on some things in batting practice and he feels ready to go. This, however, is less plausible than any of the other three possibilities, including the crazy conspiracy theory.

Oh, also the oddsmaker who still has me on its mailing list 14 years after I left the sportswriting biz released new numbers this morning. That would be Stuff Media Group, who now has the Brewers as overwhelming favorites at 11/10. That’s not to beat the Dodgers. That’s to win the World Series. The Dodgers are next at 18/5, following by the Cleveland Guardians at 17/4 and Tampa Bay at 5/1. Keep in mind those numbers came out before the Rays beat the Guardians tonight to even the American League Championship Series at 1-1, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that were updated tomorrow.

The point is, the people who set these betting odds are now so sure that the Brewers are going to win the whole enchilada that if you bet $100 on them to do so, and they actually do it, you will win a whopping $10.

And to think, just three days ago, we were all still wondering if anyone could stop the Dodgers in their quest to become the first team in a quarter-century to three-peat. The answer is clearly yes, someone can. I guess it’s still to be determined whether anyone actually will. But it’s sure starting to look that way.

There is another series going on, too

I have paid very little attention to the ALCS, and I’m guessing that’s true of most of the country outside the two markets involved. But I will watch the World Series, intently, something I have done every year since I was 10 or 11 years old. And I now find myself rooting for Cleveland to get there just because I don’t want to have to look at these hideous 1998 uniforms that Tampa Bay pulled out of mothballs just a few weeks ago for some unknown reason.

I mean, they haven’t gone by the name “Devil Rays” since 2007. And yet, there they were tonight, sporting crisp, white home jerseys with Devil Rays across the front, in gaudy teal and some weird shade of lemon-lime.

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Random Thoughts from an Old Ballwriter’s Couch

Anthony Jackson

Oct 13

 

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I never planned (and I still don’t) to make this a baseball blog. My intention is for it to be a catch-all for whatever mood I happen to be in when I sit down at the keyboard, a platform to share whatever happens to be on my mind at that particular moment. But given where we currently are, deep into the playoffs with two games completed in each League Championship Series, what happens to be on my mind tonight is a whole list of random baseball observations. Maybe I know what I’m talking about, maybe I don’t. But I would like to believe the almost two decades I spent covering the game on a daily basis gives me some level of expertise.

The late David Brinkley once wrote a book called, “Everyone is Entitled to My Opinion.” Well, I suppose everyone is entitled to mine, too.

Thanks for reading Anthony's Substack! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

Subscribed

So, here you go …

The Dodgers are done. That isn’t just me trying to reverse jinx them, even though I do still kind of hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am. It’s not just that they are down 2-0 to the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series. A lot of teams have come back from 2-0 deficits in best-of-seven series. It’s more the way they got here.

If you watched the first two games — and particularly Game 2 — the Dodgers seem hopelessly overmatched. The Brewers are younger, hungrier, more energetic and infinitely more entertaining. The Dodgers, who have the oldest roster by average age in all of Major League Baseball, are showing that age. The season is long, and the older a player gets, the more that has to take a toll, both physically and mentally. Also, collectively, the Dodgers seem content to keep taking the same businesslike approach that led them to back-to-back World Series titles the past two seasons, never panicking, never sweating. That approach played well last year when they were down 3-2 in the World Series and the remaining games to be played in Toronto. The Dodgers famously rallied, survived two tension-filled epics and hoisted another trophy, mostly on the shoulders of Yoshi Yamamoto.

This year, though, it comes across as less of an absence of panic and more of an absence of urgency. More to the point, this team hasn’t really produced offensively for the better part of three months now. It’s been a team-wide slump, and every time it looked like they might finally be coming out of it — which, not coincidentally, was every time they played a bad team with subpar pitching — it would prove to be an illusion the next time they ran into a worthy opponent.

At the center of this whole mess is Shohei Ohtani, arguably the greatest player in the history of the sport. He has been battling injuries since July, hasn’t homered since Aug. 18 and has been so bad this postseason (three measly singles in 20 at-bats and seven strikeouts in which he has looked utterly lost) that the big story after Game 2 was manager Dave Roberts saying he would have a discussion with Ohtani about possibly sitting out Game 3.

The big story from the off-day workout, though, was that Ohtani will not sit out Game 3. In defiance of all logic and reason. And for all the media covering this team, there doesn’t seem to be much reporting on the actual reason why, although I would speculate it could be either:

• Benching him would seem like singling him out, because nobody else is hitting, either;

• Roberts has been told by the front-office poobahs that Shohei will be in the starting lineup, but that doesn’t make sense because one would assume the front office still wants to actually win; or

• The Dodgers (and maybe this is me just being a crazy conspiracy theorist) are getting pressure from MLB, Fox Sports or possibly even their own marketing department to keep Ohtani front and center because he is their most globally marketable player.

The official story is that Ohtani told Roberts he has been working on some things in batting practice and he feels ready to go. This, however, is less plausible than any of the other three possibilities, including the crazy conspiracy theory.

Oh, also the oddsmaker who still has me on its mailing list 14 years after I left the sportswriting biz released new numbers this morning. That would be Stuff Media Group, who now has the Brewers as overwhelming favorites at 11/10. That’s not to beat the Dodgers. That’s to win the World Series. The Dodgers are next at 18/5, following by the Cleveland Guardians at 17/4 and Tampa Bay at 5/1. Keep in mind those numbers came out before the Rays beat the Guardians tonight to even the American League Championship Series at 1-1, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that were updated tomorrow.

The point is, the people who set these betting odds are now so sure that the Brewers are going to win the whole enchilada that if you bet $100 on them to do so, and they actually do it, you will win a whopping $10.

And to think, just three days ago, we were all still wondering if anyone could stop the Dodgers in their quest to become the first team in a quarter-century to three-peat. The answer is clearly yes, someone can. I guess it’s still to be determined whether anyone actually will. But it’s sure starting to look that way.

There is another series going on, too

I have paid very little attention to the ALCS, and I’m guessing that’s true of most of the country outside the two markets involved. But I will watch the World Series, intently, something I have done every year since I was 10 or 11 years old. And I now find myself rooting for Cleveland to get there just because I don’t want to have to look at these hideous 1998 uniforms that Tampa Bay pulled out of mothballs just a few weeks ago for some unknown reason.

I mean, they haven’t gone by the name “Devil Rays” since 2007. And yet, there they were tonight, sporting crisp, white home jerseys with Devil Rays across the front, in gaudy teal and some weird shade of lemon-lime.

When they shortened the name to just “Rays” in 2008, they changed to a classy-looking, understated uniform that featured the word “Rays” in large, perfectly horizontal lettering across the front, with one jersey in home white, one in road gray and a third in navy blue, all three with classic piping around the collar and down the front.

It’s worth mentioning, of course, that the year they starting wearing those, they went to the World Series for the first time.

The owners’ worst nightmare?

One final thought — with the current collective-bargaining agreement about to expire and the potential mother of all work stoppages looming to possibly wipe out the entire 2027 season, the owners were planning to use the Dodgers’ big-market dominance as Exhibit A on why the game needs a salary cap (and, presumably, a salary floor as well).

But if the World Series pits the small-market Brewers against the small-market Guardians or Rays, which now seems likely, will that undermine the owners’ argument? Will it prove the point that small-market teams can not only compete with the big boys, but vanquish them on the game’s biggest stage, so that the competitive imbalance that screams for a salary cap is really just a grand illusion?

Don’t bank on it. The owners want that cap. Badly. And regardless of what happens the rest of these playoffs, they aren’t going to do a sudden about-face.

Also, assuming the Dodgers don’t come back from the dead and win this NLCS, this might be the lowest-rated World Series of all time. And that’s sad, because the Brewers are one of the most compelling teams to come along in a very long time. And any true baseball fan who doesn’t tune to watch them on the game’s biggest stage will be depriving themselves.

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