What did Shohei Ohtani say about his potentially serious injury during Game 2 of the World Series on Saturday night?
Ohtani was seen gingerly holding his left arm after being caught stealing in the seventh inning of the Dodgers’ 4-2 win over the New York Yankees. Now that LA has extended its series lead to 2-0, a social media account covering Japanese baseball in English has revealed the Dodgers sensation’s exchange with translators and coaches.
Shoulder, Ohtani said as he lay on the infield, as quoted on the Yakyu Cosmopolitan X account.
“Really?” the translator asked. “Which one?”
“Left,” Ohtani said.
When asked if his arm had come out of its socket, Ohtani replied, “I think so.”
Ohtani reacts at second base after apparent injury in seventh inning against Yankees
Ohtani reacts after suffering a shoulder injury against the New York Yankees in the seventh inning According to later reports, Ohtani partially dislocated his left shoulder. His status for Monday’s Game 3 in New York is unclear. Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani “had a minor subluxation of the left shoulder” and would undergo imaging testing on Saturday evening or Sunday.
“We’ll know more in the coming days,” Roberts said. ‘The power was great. The range of motion is good. So we are encouraged. But obviously I can’t speculate because we don’t have the scans yet. We’ll know more once we get the scans. Again, now that the strength and range of motion are good, that’s definitely a positive.”
The Japanese slugger – and presumptive National League MVP – was 0 for 3 with a walk in the game. He is 1 for 8 in the first two games of the Fall Classic and is hitting .260 with three home runs and 10 RBIs in his first postseason in the majors.
‘That was tough. You never like to see the best player in the game get injured like that,” Yankees superstar Aaron Judge said. ‘If you try to steal a base like that, something like that happens. But hopefully it’s all good news. We’ll see what happens.’ Ohtani was one of the few players on the Dodgers roster to get through the season without a major injury. The pitching staff has been ravaged by injuries, with nearly every member of the starting rotation spending time on the injured list.
Ohtani Ohtani is helped off the field after suffering a seventh-inning injury in Game 2
Among the position players, Mookie Betts was sidelined for nearly two months with a broken left hand, and Max Muncy was sidelined for nearly half the season with a right oblique muscle strain. Freddie Freeman is playing in the postseason with a severely sprained right ankle.
Betts is optimistic the Dodgers can hold on with Ohtani sidelined, especially after the team overcame injuries while winning the most in the majors during the regular season and reaching the World Series for the fourth time in eight seasons.
“We’ve got a great group of guys here and I believe we can definitely figure it out. I believe in all of us,” Betts said.
Most of Ohtani’s injuries since coming to the majors in 2018 have been pitching-related, including major surgeries on his right elbow in 2018 and last year. The two-way phenom didn’t pitch this year, but became the first player in Major League history to hit at least 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a season.
In September 2019, he underwent surgery on his left kneecap to treat a rare condition. The procedure was performed on his bipartite patella, or a bipartite kneecap that wasn’t fused at birth.
Ohtani missed the 2017 World Baseball Classic after undergoing ankle surgery to repair an injury he sustained during the 2016 Japan Series.
“When you have a group like that, they pick me up when I’m down. We’ll try to do the same for him,” Freeman said.