Shohei Ohtani was in a slump for much of the postseason, and there was no denying it.
Through 38 at-bats across nine games, Ohtani was batting just .158 with his only two home runs coming in the first game of the postseason, well over two weeks before the Dodgers’ Game 4 matchup against the Milwaukee Brewers with a ticket on the early train to the World Series on the line.
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Reporters and fans alike had questioned what was going on with the superstar who hit 55 home runs and held a .282 batting average and a 1.014 OPS in the regular season. Would the Ohtani that put together his second straight NL MVP-worthy season appear in the postseason?
On Friday against the Brewers, he finally did.
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Ohtani put together one of, if not the best, postseason outing the game has ever seen, as he dominated on the mound and at the plate. In his first inning of action, Ohtani struck out three batters after walking the first. Afterwards, Ohtani walked to the dugout, put on his helmet and grabbed his bat before launching a 446 home run, reintroducing the Brewers to a version of Ohtani they had not yet seen.
By the end of the night, they had seen enough. Ohtani allowed just two hits and zero earned runs across six innings while hitting a mind-boggling three home runs over his three at-bats.
“I mean, you can only contain Shohei for so long,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman told MLB.com. “[The Brewers] had, and they did a great job of it. No one puts more pressure on themselves than Shohei. For him to break out like this, each day we were expecting it.”
The pressure Ohtani put on himself resulted in a rare occurrence for the superstar: participating in an on-field batting practice. The day before Game 3 of the NLCS, Ohtani took to the field at Dodger Stadium, hitting home run after home run according to those in attendance.
While much has been made of Ohtani’s perceived slump, the 31-year-old doesn’t see it quite like that, citing the brevity of the postseason.
“I felt like the last couple days I felt pretty good at the plate,” Ohtani said after the Dodgers’ clinched their second straight World Series berth. “And just because of the postseason, the sample size, the lack of, it’s just that I think the lack of performance really skews in this short period of time.”
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