For Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani, World Series a greater priority than Cy Young Award

Shohei Ohtani won’t destroy his body to pursue a Cy Young Award.

That was the major takeaway from the news that Ohtani wouldn’t make his scheduled start as a pitcher on Friday or play in the All-Star Game next week.

Ohtani will receive treatment on his irritated left knee, and the Dodgers can now exhale in relief.

The two-way player previously said his main objective was to enter the postseason in optimal condition, his actions proving that really was the case.

Ohtani was healthy enough to throw a bullpen session on Wednesday and remain the Dodgers’ designated hitter in the series opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks two days later, which indicates he could have forced himself to make his final start before the All-Star break if he wanted.

Someone as mysterious as Ohtani can only be judged by his actions, and what his actions showed was that he was prioritizing his team’s ambitions over individual glory.

His eyes remained set on the World Series.

“He’s always said the goal is October,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He’s had the Cy Young in mind, and understandably so, but nothing is gonna come in front of being healthy for October.”

In retrospect, this wasn’t a surprise.

Think back to 2023, his final year with the Angels. Before this season, that was the last one in which he pitched from the start.

By the All-Star break, he’d made 17 starts, which is three more than he has this year. 

In an early-August start against the Seattle Mariners that season, Ohtani was removed after pitching only four innings because of an unfamiliar sensation in his pitching hand: His middle finger cramped.

Following that start, Ohtani was asked if he wanted to undergo a MRI examination, then-Angels general manager Perry Minasian later said. 

Ohtani declined and continued pitching. Two starts later, he blew out his elbow. He underwent Tommy John surgery the next month.

However this looked like from the outside, the insistence by Ohtani to continue pitching was about what was best for his team. Just three days before that start against the Mariners, the Angels were 4 ½ games back of the first-place Texas Rangers.

The selfish decision would have been to not pitch. Ohtani was only two months away from becoming a free agent. 

But Ohtani knew the Angels had no chance of reaching the postseason without him. He didn’t mind possibly risking hundreds of millions of dollars to keep alive his team’s remote possibilities.

With the Dodgers now, what Ohtani could be sacrificing is his best shot at the one major award he hasn’t won.

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Ohtani has a 1.79 earned-run average, but his candidacy for the National League Cy Young Award is complicated by the relatively few innings he has pitched.

Ohtani has pitched 85 ⅔ innings, which is short of the qualifying standard for the ERA title. Missing even one start could be fatal to his Cy Young ambitions.

The favorite to win the prize, Jacob Misiorowski of the Milwaukee Brewers, has pitched 111 innings. Christopher Sanchez of the Philadelphia Phillies has thrown 120 ⅓ innings and Yoshinobu Yamamoto of the Dodgers 104 ⅔.

But Roberts said of Ohtani agreeing to not pitch on Friday: “That’s not a surprise.”

Part of the reason he did so was because of the Dodgers’ place in the standings. The Dodgers went into Friday with a 14 ½-game lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres in the National League West. 

Their 61 wins were the most in the major leagues, which had them positioned to have home-field advantage throughout the postseason. The top two teams in each league receive a first-round bye in the postseason. The third-best team in the NL, the Atlanta Braves, started Friday with seven fewer wins than them.

With the Dodgers, Ohtani doesn’t have to do everything on his own, as he did with the Angels.  Here, he feels comfortable missing a start to prepare his knee for the season’s backstretch. 

Ohtani will have liquid drained from his knee, which has bothered him for the last month. He will also receive a pain-relieving injection. 

Roberts described the treatment as preventative.

“If there’s a chance that we could kind of be proactive and get it drained and do whatever we need to do to kind of try to manage it, and along with the rest for All-Star break, we were going to do that,” Roberts said.

Roberts said Ohtani’s status as a pitcher after the All-Star break will be unaffected. The Dodgers return from the midseason intermission on July 17 with a road series against the New York Yankees.

“I’m not sure where he’s going to be slotted in,” Roberts said, raising the possibility that Ohtani could also make his first post-All-Star start in a three-game series in Philadelphia that starts on July 20.

Whichever the case, Ohtani’s focus is clear.

More than any individual award, he wants to win another World Series.