LOS ANGELES — When the fans at Toronto’s Rogers Centre chanted “We don’t need you” during Shohei Ohtani’s final at-bat in the Dodgers’ Game 1 loss in the World Series, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani was too focused on hitting to hear them.
Oh, he heard them alright.
“I thought it was great,” Ohtani said in Japanese when asked about it following Sunday’s workout at Dodger Stadium. “My wife loves that chant so she teased me a little about it.”
Later, he joked with the Japanese media, saying he hoped she wouldn’t start chanting that at home.
“Overall, I can relax once I get home,” Ohtani said. “I just try to make sure I don’t hear the same kind of chants at home that I heard in Toronto.”
Ohtani said “of course” he could hear the chants in the sold-out stadium – just like he hears the “M-V-P” chants at home.
“But I’m focused during my at-bats, so it doesn’t really bother me or anything like that,” said Ohtani, who was also booed during introductions by Blue Jays fans who feel he jilted their team in free agency two years ago.
Roberts has made it clear that the Dodgers do need Ohtani to do his part for the Dodgers’ offense during the postseason. Ohtani is tied with Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero with six home runs in the postseason (three of them in his historic Game 4 performance during the National League Championship Series and two in the first game of the Wild Card Series).
Overall, though, Ohtani has hit just .224 (11 for 49) in the Dodgers’ first 12 postseason games.
“I do feel better at the plate recently, so in that sense, it’s been good overall,” he said Sunday. “But equally important is we have (faced) pretty good pitching and we have to kind of respect that as well. I do everything in my power to make sure that I’m prepared as much as possible and being at the plate with the right mentality. But you have to give some credit to the other side as well.”
TRAVEL TROUBLE
The Dodgers’ two-plane travel sytsem let them down after Game 2 in Toronto.
The first plane with players only left right after the game and arrived back in Los Angeles without a hitch.
But the team travels with two planes. The second plane carrying coaches, staff and families wasn’t scheduled to leave until Sunday morning. That departure was delayed a couple of hours.
“I don’t want to get too far into it. I just arrived about 30 minutes ago,” Roberts said after the team pushed back its Sunday night workout to 6 p.m. “There was some delays. I don’t know if there was intent or not. But, man, the international stuff was a bear. But we made it. We made it.”
KERSHAW FAREWELL
The next three games will be Clayton Kershaw’s final games at Dodger Stadium before he retires after this season. He has made just one appearance in relief during this postseason and Roberts has made no promises about getting him into one more game at Dodger Stadium.
“I would love to get him into one of these games if the situation is right,” Roberts said. “But first and foremost, I’m going to make decisions that I feel are best for helping the team win that particular game. If he’s a part of it, fantastic.”
UP NEXT
Game 3 – Blue Jays (RHP Max Scherzer, 1-0, 3.18 ERA this postseason) at Dodgers (RHP Tyler Glasnow, 0-0, 0.68 ERA), Monday, 5 p.m., FOX (Ch. 11), 570 AM