​The Dodgers pulled Shohei Ohtani from his scheduled Friday start against the Arizona Diamondbacks because of irritation in his left knee, an issue that has bothered him intermittently for roughly a month. He will still serve as the designated hitter over the weekend but will not travel to Philadelphia for All-Star activities. Ohtani exited a game in which he was the DH on June 10 in Pittsburgh but returned the next day to start on the mound. Since then, he has a 4.38 ERA across four starts, yet he has lasted at least six innings in every outing, posting a 3.32 xERA, a 26.2 percent strikeout rate, and a 7.5 percent walk rate. By comparison, through his first 10 starts he owned a 0.74 ERA, 2.45 xERA, a 28.8 percent strikeout rate, and a 7.7 percent walk rate.
Offensively this week, Ohtani has homered twice, but over seven July games he has tallied only six hits in 27 plate appearances, hitting .222/.323/.444. In a team release, the Dodgers stated that Ohtani will undergo “interventions” in his left knee starting after Sunday’s game. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters Friday at Dodger Stadium that Ohtani would have fluid drained from his left knee and receive a pain-killing injection, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register and others. “He’s been managing this quite well, the knee,” Roberts said Friday, as shown on SportsNet LA. “If there’s a chance that we could be proactive and get it drained, and do whatever we need to do to try to manage it, along with the rest for the All-Star break, we were gonna do that.”
How the Dodgers balance Ohtani’s rest and playing time while he navigates the demands of being a full-time two-way player for the first time since 2023 remains a critical factor for the season. He has not served as the designated hitter in four of his 10 pitching starts and has had full days off with neither hitting nor pitching in five other games (May 14 vs. Giants, June 4 at Diamondbacks, June 12 at White Sox, June 19 vs. Orioles for the birth of his second child, and July 4 vs. Padres). Even with these built-in rests, Ohtani has logged 395 plate appearances this season and faced 340 batters as a pitcher, accounting for 735 total plate appearances overall—28.7 percent more than the next-highest player, Miami Marlins ace Sandy Alcantara. Through 94 Dodgers games, that translates to roughly 7.82 plate appearances per game for Ohtani on average. To provide some context, last season Ohtani was stretched to four innings in pitching by August 6; beginning with that game, he faced 125 batters as a pitcher and batted 210 times over the Dodgers’ final 48 games, averaging about 6.98 plate appearances per game.
Ohtani has started each of the last five All-Star Games and was voted this year to start again at designated hitter after receiving the most fan votes in the National League. In addition, Cardinals catcher and designated hitter Ivan Herrera was named on Friday to participate in the All-Star festivities.