A month ago, Dave Roberts was asked if the Dodgers’ hope was for Shohei Ohtani to be back in the team’s pitching rotation by May this season.
“I think that’s about right, yeah,” the manager responded, speaking on Feb. 1 at the club’s preseason fan fest event. “And it might be earlier.”
Fast forward to Thursday, however, and Roberts’ answer to the same question had substantially changed.
While Ohtani, the two-way star who missed all of last season as a pitcher while recovering from Tommy John surgery, has continued to play catch on a regular basis at Dodgers camp this week, the right-hander has not thrown a bullpen session since Feb. 25 — a change in his throwing program that has coincided with his return as a hitter to game action in Cactus League play.
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According to Roberts, it has been a collective, and precautionary, decision; intended to prevent the reigning National League MVP, who also underwent surgery on his non-throwing left shoulder this offseason to repair a torn labrum, from over-taxing his body as he prepares for opening day as a designated hitter.
“We just felt that to intensify the bullpens, alongside of the intensity of the games, wasn’t smart,” Roberts said. “So we just wanted to kind of slow-play it.”
But, as a result, the timeline for Ohtani to return to pitching in the majors is now far less clear than it had been entering the spring.
“I just feel, and we all feel, [we’re] just trying to make it a broad time to return,” Roberts said Thursday when asked if May was still the club’s target to have Ohtani back on the mound. “We just don’t know. So I think that when he’s ready … we’ll know. But I don’t want to put any kind of expectation on you guys, or Shohei.”
The development, in and of itself, was not a cause for alarm.
All offseason, the team signaled it would be cautious with Ohtani’s pitching rehabilitation, which has been ongoing since he underwent his second career Tommy John surgery in September 2023.
Their goal has long been to have him at full strength come the end of the season, hopeful of maximizing his tantalizing two-way talents for the stretch run of the regular season and into the…