Shohei Ohtani Is the Best and Worst Player Currently on the Dodgers

On the mound, Shohei Ohtani is the best pitcher in baseball at this very moment.

He has an arsenal of elite pitches that range from a 101 MPH fastball that can paint the corner to a 68 MPH curveball that makes batters fall to their knees. And he can throw them back-to-back without breaking a sweat.

Ohtani the batter, though?

The side of Ohtani that has been the primary reason why he’s won back-to-back National League MVP awards and led the Los Angeles Dodgers to two World Series championships?

He’s been awful.

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No hyperbole. No stretching of the numbers. No relative to the level he usually performs at. Ohtani, the batter, has been disastrous for the Dodgers over the past month, a constant thorn in the team’s side at the start of games with him as the lead-off batter.

On Monday, Ohtani went 0-5 in a third-straight loss, this time to the archrival San Francisco Giants, who entered the four-game series as one of the worst teams in baseball.

Each time Ohtani came up to bat, the general anxiety the opposing team had when facing the four-time MVP was gone, as the Japanese slugger flailed his bat around for balls thrown into the dirt while watching pitches go straight down the middle.

It’s the first time during his Dodgers tenure that Ohtani has struggled this mightily at the plate, leaving the team in an awkward position. While Ohtani’s pitching has taken a massive step forward, putting him at the front of the NL Cy Young race after the first month, his batting has taken two or three steps back.

Do the Dodgers try to have him focus less on pitching, hoping his bat will come alive again? Or do they begin resting him more while giving Dalton Rushing more run as a designated hitter as they try to conserve Ohtani’s energy as a batter for the postseason?

For now, though, the Dodgers are left with a conundrum that maybe no team has ever had to face in their history.

What do you do when your best-performing player and your worst-performing player are actually the same person, split between two roles?

Good luck, Dave Roberts.

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This story was originally published May 11, 2026 at 11:30 PM.