HOUSTON — Shohei Ohtani was given the night off from hitting on Tuesday. The rest of the Dodgers’ lineup joined him.
With Ohtani limited to pitching, the Dodgers’ lineup was held to six hits without him – half of them from Andy Pages – in a 2-1 loss to the Houston Astros.
Ohtani has not hit during his last two pitching starts – last week at home against the Miami Marlins and Tuesday in Houston. Even though Ohtani has been slumping at the plate, the Dodgers’ lineup without him has been lacking. They produced two runs on 12 hits in those two starts. One run came after Ohtani left his start against the Marlins and the Dodgers didn’t score until the eighth inning against the Astros (when he technically was still in the game), the only run they have scored with him in the game during his last three pitching starts.
“Offense, including myself, hasn’t done a great job scoring runs. And if there was a situation where, if I was hitting well, I’m sure the team would want me to pitch and hit as well,” said Ohtani (hitless in 17 at-bats between his no-hit starts) through his interpreter. “But I understand, in a situation where, ‘Hey, just focus on pitching, turn the page on the hitting,’ I understand that the team might think like that.
Max Muncy called it just “the bad luck of the draw” that the Dodgers haven’t scored for Ohtani. But it doesn’t seem coincidental that the Dodgers’ offense is less potent without a four-time MVP hitting at the top of the lineup — even if he’s slumping.
“Sure. He’s one of the best hitters in baseball,” Muncy said. “Even if you want to talk about the start he’s gotten off to in terms of hitting, he’s still one of the best hitters in baseball and it’s still that presence that the other team is scared of. I don’t know if there’s anything to it or not. But you definitely feel it when he’s not in there.”
Ohtani continued to be outstanding on the mound, allowing just four hits and completing seven innings for the first time with the Dodgers.
“He’s doing his job. He’s pitching, he’s doing everything he can to help the team win. And we as an offense need to find ways to score runs for him,” Miguel Rojas said. “It’s not because he’s not in the lineup that we’re not scoring runs. He’s just focusing on pitching on those days. It’s really hard to do what he’s doing. He’s taking the ball every five or six days, and he’s doing what he’s supposed to do to win the game.
“So it’s on us. And we have plenty of hitters in this lineup that can get the job done. We haven’t been able to do it the last couple starts. But we’re looking forward to do it the next 20 starts.”
They had plenty of opportunities to score in support of Ohtani on Tuesday but went 1 for 8 with runners in scoring position and stranded seven baserunners, most of them in the first four innings.
Freddie Freeman doubled with one out in the first but never advanced. Pages got to third base in the second inning after beating out an infield single, stealing second base and moving to third on a ground out. He was stranded there.
In the fourth inning, the Dodgers loaded the bases on two walks sandwiched around another Pages single. But Rojas bounced into a force out to strand all three. Rojas came up with runners on base four times in the game but went hitless.
“I had a lot of opportunities with runners on base right there, and I couldn’t get the job done tonight,” he said. “Put a good swing on the ball the first at-bat, and then second at-bat (with the bases loaded) I was a little in between and definitely couldn’t get the job done. But yeah, the guy was attacking the zone and throwing strikes, and we couldn’t really put anything together when he had opportunities around the bases. Yeah, I couldn’t get it done.”
An inning later, the Astros’ young outfield duo of Zach Cole and Cam Smith kept the Dodgers stymied. Cole ran down Freeman’s fly ball to the warning track and Smith made a shoetop catch of Will Smith’s line drive.
The Dodgers had just three hits but drew four walks in seven innings against Astros starter Peter Lambert. They finally scored in the eighth inning against the Astros’ bullpen when Alex Call led off with a pinch-hit double. Kyle Tucker drove him in with a two-out single.
“He was just mixing well. Throwing pitches in counts he shouldn’t have,” Muncy said of Lambert. “I say ‘shouldn’t have’ like it’s a bad thing. He was doing what was right for him. He was mixing well. The mistakes he was making he wasn’t making over the plate. I mean, we hit several balls hard tonight. We just didn’t get a whole lot to show for it. That’s the unfortunate part of baseball.”
Ohtani’s pitching didn’t require much backing to make him a winner. He did give up two earned runs in a start for the first time this year. But that is all he gave up in seven innings, his longest start as a Dodger.
Both runs came on home runs, the first he has given up this year. Christian Walker jumped on a first-pitch fastball leading off the second inning for the first homer – a rite of passage for Dodgers’ pitchers. Walker has now hit 30 home runs in 80 games against the Dodgers, tormenting them frequently during his days with the Arizona Diamondbacks.
An inning later, light-hitting utility infielder Braden Shewmake sent an 0-and-1 fastball into the Crawford Boxes just inside the left-field foul pole for his third home run in 38 major-league games scattered over three seasons with three teams.
“It was really mislocated, to the area completely opposite of where I was intending to (throw),” Ohtani said through his interpreter of the home run balls. “If the execution was better, I think it wouldn’t have been a homer, but they also put good swings as well.”
Ohtani gave up just two other hits – back-to-back singles with two outs in the fifth inning. He struck out Jose Altuve on a comically off-the-plate sweeper to end that mild threat and pitched into a seventh inning for the first time in a regular-season game since July 2023, striking out eight in completing seven innings.