Dodgers still trying to find the right balance with Shohei Ohtani after loss to Marlins

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani was restricted to only pitching duties in Tuesday night's loss to the Miami Marlins. It was the second time this season that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts removed Ohtani from the batting lineup on a day that he took the mound. Ohtani the pitcher was once again dominant, allowing just one earned run over six innings. But LA did miss his bat, as the Dodgers were able to muster just one run of their own in the 2-1 defeat.

You can make a strong argument that Ohtani has been the best starting pitcher in baseball so far this season. Through five starts (30 innings pitched), Ohtani has the lowest ERA (0.60) among qualified pitchers in MLB and the fifth-lowest WHIP (0.87). Tuesday night was an example of Ohtani not even having his best stuff, and he still managed to strike out nine Marlins and limit Miami to five hits.

Dodgers are being cautious with Shohei Ohtani's two-way workload

Ohtani has been clear that he wants to assert himself as one of the world's best pitchers, and he's embarking on a full two-way season for the first time since 2023. But the Dodgers' leadership isn't going to sit back and watch Ohtani burn himself out in the process.

Both Roberts and Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman have talked about how managing Ohtani's two-way schedule is an ongoing process of discovery, mostly because Ohtani is a completely unprecedented baseball player. Friedman doesn't try to pretend like the Dodgers have a foolproof plan in place; rather, he admits that LA is figuring things out on the fly. And it's a good thing the Dodgers have a world-class manager in Roberts to make those feel-based decisions during the course of the season.

“Obviously having him do both duties ... it’s great," Roberts told The Athletic's Fabian Ardaya on Tuesday. "But how sustainable is it without kind of taking a little bit off his plate ... (is) the question and it’s not exact science.”

Dave Roberts' elite baseball mind will figure out how often to scale back Shohei Ohtani

Roberts is facing the difficult task of managing a type of player that we've never experienced before. If you put zero limitations on Ohtani, he might go ahead and have the best regular season of all time, but then he might also be gassed by October. That wouldn't work at all for Roberts and a Dodgers team eyeing a three-peat.

Roberts may still toy with the idea of removing Ohtani from the batting lineup on every day that he starts. It's an ever-evolving decision that Roberts and the Dodgers will make based on a variety of factors, first and foremost being the self-reported physical wellness of Ohtani himself.

Ohtani said he felt "great" on Tuesday on the mound (per Ardaya), but that there was something a tad off with his mechanics. We've all come to learn that Ohtani's "off" day is still better than almost everyone else's best day, and that applies to both sides of the diamond. As a hitter this year, Ohtani's tallied a .898 OPS with six home runs, which is considered sub-par at this stage of the season for the four-time MVP.

Ohtani might very well win the National League Cy Young this season, as well as another NL MVP trophy. But what the Dodgers want most of all is to make Ohtani a three-time World Series champ, and for that, they'll need to preserve his body so that he's peaking in the fall, not in May.

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