LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shohei Ohtani had never gone 10 games without hitting a homer for the Los Angeles Dodgers until this month.
The three-time MVP ended his drought Saturday night — and then started making up for lost time.
Ohtani hit two homers against the Giants, emphatically reaching 25 homers for the fifth consecutive season during Los Angeles’ 11-5 victory over San Francisco.
Ohtani led off the game with his 24th, hammering Landen Roupp’s fourth pitch 419 feet deep into the right-field bleachers with an exit velocity of 110.3 mph.
The slugger had gone 10 for 40 with no RBIs since his most recent homer June 2 — although he still had an eight-game hitting streak during his power outage.
“It did feel like I hadn’t hit a homer in a while,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “In terms of the context of the two homers, I think the first homer was more significant, just being able to score early in the game.”
Ohtani then led off the sixth with his 25th homer, sending Tristan Beck’s breaking ball outside the strike zone into the bleachers in right. Dodgers fans brought him home with a standing ovation for his third multihomer game of the season and the 22nd of his career.
He also moved one homer behind the Yankees’ Aaron Judge and Seattle’s Cal Raleigh for the overall major league lead.
“I didn’t realize that,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said when informed of Ohtani’s homer drought. “He has a way of making up for things and leveling things out, so hitting two homers tonight gets him, I guess, back on track. … I think it seemed like a while. I think there was a lot of chase down below in the last 10 days, so tonight he got the ball up, used the big part of the field and put some big swings together. But yeah, when he goes, it makes life a lot easier for all of us.”
Ohtani had slowed down a bit over the past two weeks since he was named the NL Player of the Month for May, racking up 15 homers and 28 RBIs.
He was back in formidable form against the Giants: Ohtani reached base four times and scored three runs in his first four at-bats, drawing two walks to go with his two homers.
Ohtani hadn’t played in 10 straight games without hitting a homer since 2023 in the final 10 games of his six-year tenure with the Los Angeles Angels. He has hit at least 34 homers and driven in at least 95 runs in the past four consecutive seasons.
While his OPS (1.023) is nearly identical to last year’s effort, Ohtani is behind the pace in several statistical categories compared to last season, when he became the first player to record 50 homers and 50 stolen bases before the Dodgers won his first World Series title. Most notably, Ohtani has only 41 RBIs in 69 games this season after driving in 130 runs in 159 games last year.
But the two-way superstar doesn’t believe his numbers at the plate are due to his increased workload on the mound as he prepares to pitch for the first time since 2023.
Ohtani threw three simulated innings in San Diego last Tuesday, and Roberts has said there’s now a chance Ohtani will pitch in a game before the All-Star break in mid-July.
“The live BP is really an important part of the progression,” Ohtani said. “The intensity is different, so how that feels to my body is going to be different as well, but it’s something that I do have to go through to make sure that my body feels right.”
Ohtani remains firmly committed to resuming his career as a pitcher. The Dodgers have always been supportive, despite his value as a designated hitter — and they also could really use his talents now to help out a staff that had 14 pitchers on the injured list to begin the week.
“I do feel like just being the two-way player that I used to be was the norm,” Ohtani said when asked if his two-way work this season is tough on him. “So last year really was the abnormal year. For me, it’s just about getting back to what I used to do.”
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