Had the Dodgers clinched the National League West title by now, like they usually do, they could have given Shohei Ohtani Friday night off to bask in the afterglow of Thursday’s six-hit, three-homer, two-double, 10-RBI game in which he became the charter member of baseball’s 50-homer, 50-stolen base club.
But with the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, the two hottest teams in baseball since the All-Star break, within striking distance heading into the penultimate weekend of the season, Ohtani was in the lineup for the series opener against the last-place Colorado Rockies in Dodger Stadium.
“There are no days off right now,” manager Dave Roberts said before the game. “We have to keep winning baseball games. We’ve still got people on our heels, and I want our guys to continue to stay hungry.”
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That’s not a problem for Ohtani, who seems insatiable at the plate. The slugger crushed his NL-leading 52nd homer in the fifth inning, turning a one-run deficit into a one-run lead, and he stole his 52nd base in the seventh, part of a three-hit night that helped push the Dodgers to a 6-4 win in Chavez Ravine.
Teoscar Hernández snapped a 3-3 tie in the sixth with his 30th homer and capped a two-run seventh with an RBI single, as the Dodgers (92-62) reduced their magic number to clinch their 11th division title in 12 years to five and maintained leads of four games over the Padres and six games over the Diamondbacks.
Ohtani, who hammered a chest-high, full-count, 92-mph fastball from Rockies left-hander Kyle Freeland 423 feet for his game-turning homer, went nine for 10 with four homers and 12 RBIs in wins over Miami on Thursday and Colorado on Friday night. It marked the 14th time this season Ohtani hit a homer and stole a base in the same game, breaking Rickey Henderson’s MLB record of 13 in 1986.
“I think he’s ramped up his focus, I really do,” Roberts said of Ohtani. “Not to say that anyone is ever trying to make outs, but I think these last couple games, he’s locked in. To be able to cover that ball above the zone, go to the big part of the…