Shohei Ohtani's ridiculous hitting trend is actually saving Dodgers' RISP woes

The Los Angeles Dodgers put on an absolute show of force on Wednesday night during Game 3 of the NLCS against the New York Mets. LA got the scoring started early against New York starter Luis Severino (with a little help from a blunder by catcher Francisco Alvarez), and the Mets were swinging hopelessly at pretty much every offering from Walker Buehler, who returned to vintage form exactly when the Dodgers needed him to.

Kiké Hernández hit a two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth, and the Mets were still putting up a big, fat zero. The game looked like it'd already been won by the top of the eighth, but then Shohei Ohtani came up to put a finer point on things.

With Will Smith and Hernández on base, Ohtani saw a second pitch cutter from Tylor Megill and absolutely pummeled a baseball halfway up the second deck to put the Dodgers up 7-0. Most Mets fans didn't stick around after that, and the seats behind home plate were conspicuously empty when Max Muncy capped it all off with a solo homer in the ninth.

With that three-run homer, Ohtani is now 7-for-9 with runners in scoring position this October. When the bases are empty? 0-for-22. Absurd.

Shohei Ohtani seems to be reversing Dodgers' postseason RISP curse with ridiculous playoff stats

This is all just a pretty bizarre double-edged sword. 0-for-22 with the bases empty isn't exactly what you want from a guy who's batting leadoff, but Ohtani's production so far is undeniable. His .226 average is the Dodgers' sixth-highest, behind Hernández, Tommy Edman, Max Muncy, Freddie Freeman, and Miguel Rojas, but he also now leads the team in RBI with eight. He also leads the team in strikeouts with 13.

Ohtani hasn't been giving Mookie Betts and Freeman many RBI opportunities, but he's become the guy that you want at the plate when there's a chance for him to score them himself. His only other postseason home run so far was another clutch three-run homer to tie Game 1 of the NLDS, a game the Dodgers went on to win.

There's not much to complain about here, really; Ohtani is driving runs in, and that's the name of the game. He's taken the Dodgers' usual problem — hitting with runners in scoring position — and completely flipped it on its head. Dave Roberts might want to think about putting Betts back in the leadoff spot if this is what playoff Ohtani is capable of when there's some incentive on the base paths, but it's mostly just really, really uncanny.