Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani strikes out nine Phillies hitters during NLDS Game 1 in MLB playoff pitching debut

Shohei Ohtani toed the rubber on the game's biggest stage for the first time Saturday night. Ohtani made his postseason pitching debut in the Dodgers' 5-3 Game 1 win over the Phillies in the NLDS at Citizens Bank Park (GameTracker) and pitched well, better than his three runs in six innings may lead you to believe. It was a classic "One Bad Inning" start for the Los Angeles Dodgers star.

An Alec Bohm walk and a Brandon Marsh single set J.T. Realmuto up for the two-run triple that opened the scoring in the second inning of Game 1. Right fielder Teoscar Hernández, a below-average defender, did a pretty terrible job cutting this ball off in the gap, allowing Realmuto to get to third base. He scored two batters later on Harrison Bader's sacrifice fly.

Bohm, Marsh, and Realmuto all reached base to start the second. Ohtani allowed only two of the other 20 Philadelphia Phillies he faced to reach. After the second inning, Ohtani got a handle on his splitter, and used it to strike out five of the eight batters he faced after Bader's sacrifice fly. The Phillies missed 23 times on their 48 swings against Ohtani, an incredible 48% whiff rate.

"Prior to the game, just preparing for the game -- looking at the data, doing my usual preparation -- I was a little nervous, imagining myself out on the mound," Ohtani said through an interpreter after the game. "But once I was out on the mound and on the field, that went away. It was really me focusing."

Ohtani's two biggest outs came in the fifth inning. With runners on first and second, he got Trea Turner to line out to short and struck out 56-homer man Kyle Schwarber with a beautiful curveball, stranding two important insurance runs. All told, Ohtani struck out nine batters and allowed just the three runs in six innings. He threw 89 pitches, a season high.

Ohtani returned to pitching this year after having his second UCL surgery in September 2023. He made 14 closely monitored starts during the regular season and pitched to a 2.87 ERA with 62 strikeouts in 47 innings, and generally looked excellent. That was the case before surgery too. Ohtani had a 2.84 ERA from 2021-23 and finished fourth in the Cy Young voting in 2022.

While rehabbing from surgery, Ohtani continued to hit, and he made his postseason debut as a DH during L.A.'s World Series run last season. His Game 1 did not go especially well at the plate: he went 0 for 4 with four strikeouts, three of them looking, and walked once. Cristopher Sánchez got him three times and Matt Strahm got him with two on and no outs in the seventh.

Philadelphia's pitching staff is set up in such a way that Ohtani (and Freddie Freeman) may only get two or three at-bats against a righty the entire series, and chances are that righty will be Jhoan Duran. The Phillies have three lefty starters lined up (Sánchez, Jesús Luzardo, Ranger Suárez) and Strahm as a load-bearing high-leverage reliever.

The magic of Ohtani is such that he can go 0 for 4 with four strikeouts, and still be in line to pick up the win as a pitcher. Hernández atoned for his defensive gaffe with a go-ahead three-run home run in the seventh. It's a very deep, battle-tested Dodgers team, one in which Ohtani is the star but hardly the only player the opponent has to worry about.