How Shohei Ohtani is fulfilling a 'childhood dream' this October

How Shohei Ohtani is fulfilling a ‘childhood dream’ this October

LOS ANGELES — For the past six years, Shohei Ohtani’s postseason memories came only as a spectator.

He remembers working out in Seattle when the Dodgers celebrated their 2020 short-season title. He remembers watching some playoff games last year after elbow surgery wiped out the end of his final season with the Angels. He remembers the disappointment of witnessing other teams do what his team could never accomplish.

“Overall, it’s just really a mixed, complicated feeling,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton, “not being able to participate in the postseason.”

That feeling is finally gone in 2024, as he gets set to play postseason baseball for the first time in his major-league career Saturday night.

Twenty-four hours ahead of his first playoff game, Ohtani was asked if he was nervous. His interpreter, Will Ireton, had translated the first two questions to begin Friday’s press conference. On this query, though, the reigning National League Player of the Month decided to take it himself.

“Nope,” Ohtani responded succinctly in English before Ireton could even begin the translation.

“It’s always been my childhood dream to be able to be in an important situation, to play in important games,” he elaborated later in Japanese. “So I think the excitement of that is greater than anything else that I could possibly feel.”

Eight years ago, at just 22 years old, Ohtani’s two-way skills helped the 2016 Nippon Ham Fighters win NPB’s Japan Series. This winter, he made a change to try to reach his sport’s pinnacle again.

Thirty miles northwest of Anaheim, Ohtani joined a Dodgers team that had made the playoffs 11 straight seasons. Even more enticing, he appreciated that the club’s leadership considered that decade, which included just the one short-season World Series title, a failure.

Ohtani’s desire to win, and the Dodgers’ ability to do so consistently, made for a symbiotic relationship. It was a welcome change for a player who had never experienced a single winning season or even meaningful late-season baseball as a major-leaguer.

This September, for the first time in his career, every contest mattered. And he took off.

Over the course of the month, Ohtani led the majors in batting average, slugging, OPS, hits and steals among a litany of offensive stats. By season’s end, he became the first player ever with 50 homers and 50 steals in a season. He finished the year with 54 and 59, respectively, surpassing Ichiro Suzuki’s single-season record for steals by a Japanese-born player in the process.

“For the people who are conspiracy theorists and think that Vince McMahon is scripting Major League Baseball, I think the way he got to 40/40, the game he had to get to 50/50, I think has added some fuel for those people,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “It’s incredible. The ability to slow everything down around him is unlike anything I’ve ever seen.”

There may be no better example than last year, when he sparkled in front of the bright lights of the World Baseball Classic, hitting .435 with a 1.345 OPS while going 2-0 on the mound with a 1.86 ERA to earn MVP honors. Ohtani put a bow on Team Japan’s win by striking out teammate Mike Trout to secure a victory over Team USA.

“What you don’t know about someone until you see them in those moments is, What kind of competitor are they?” Friedman said. “And he more than answered those questions for Samurai Japan, especially in that ninth inning. I got goosebumps watching that inning, and I think the whole world got to see what an incredible competitor he is.”

Ohtani’s performance was preceded by a rousing speech pregame in which he advised his teammates not to be intimidated by the superstars on the other side.

“He was leading the team,” Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Ohtani’s WBC teammate, recalled through a translator, “performing as kind of like a leader of the team.”

RELATED: Yankees’ path clear to World Series? Dodgers-Phillies NLCS? LDS predictions

This experience will differ from the WBC though, as Ohtani acknowledged, in part because of the five days leading into the postseason. To try to stay hot and game-ready, Ohtani went to Dodger Stadium every day throughout the hiatus and got two live at-bats per day. His veteran teammates haven’t felt the need to offer him any sage advice ahead of his first postseason.

They saw all they needed down the stretch.

The Dodgers’ grasp of the division lead was slipping at the time. Their 8.5-game lead in the National League West in late July had shrunk to two in the season’s final week. Ohtani came to the rescue. He authored one of the greatest single-game performances of all time to get to 50/50, helping clinch a spot in the playoffs for the Dodgers in the process. A week later, his late go-ahead hits against the Padres team chasing the Dodgers in the standings clinched the division.

Over his final 10 games, Ohtani batted .628 with six homers, 10 stolen bases and 20 RBIs.

“If there’s any person that I feel that’s going to be able to handle this,” manager Dave Roberts said, “it’s certainly Shohei.”

It looks that way more now than it did at the start of the year, when Ohtani had a tendency to chase with runners on base. He said he had “a strong desire to fit in with the team as soon as possible,” and that anxiousness was leaking into his at-bats. The lone imperfection to his offensive profile would eventually disappear.

Beyond the walk-off grand slam to get to 40/40 and the otherworldly performance to get to 50/50, Ohtani’s knack for hitting in the clutch improved more and more the closer the calendar got to October. He went 15-for-26 with runners in scoring position in September and finished the season with an OPS over 1.000 in high-leverage spots.

“I think that he understands the talent behind him,” Roberts said. “He can’t do it all on his own.”

That supporting cast, led by Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, has made pitching to Ohtani all the more challenging. Despite a year that will likely end with Ohtani’s third MVP trophy, he was intentionally walked just 10 times, down more than twice as much from a season ago.

While Padres manager Mike Shildt wouldn’t reveal his plan to keep Ohtani off the bases, he acknowledged how the threats directly behind Ohtani in the lineup change the dynamic.

“You usually put somebody on because you like the matchups better behind them,” Shildt said. “And you’ve got two MVP-caliber guys right behind him.”

There might be a time in this series, Shildt said, when the Padres will give Ohtani the free base. At the same time, the San Diego skipper expressed belief in his cadre of pitching talents and sounded willing to let them try to attack the Dodgers’ star DH.

Lefties hit just .233 against the Padres pitching staff this year — the sixth-lowest mark in the majors — and the addition of southpaw Tanner Scott to the bullpen gives San Diego an important high-leverage weapon to combat the many left-handed sluggers in the Dodgers’ lineup in the NLDS.

But few hitters are like Ohtani, who finally will make an imprint on the MLB playoffs instead of just watching them.

“I’m excited for our fans,” Friedman said. “I’m excited for fans all over the world to get a chance to see this. It’s been the thing he talked about when we met in December — every subsequent conversation with him has been about October. I think he’s really excited for the moment.”

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.

[Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account, follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily.]