Here's a simple request for the Dodgers: say the thing your own player already said.
On Monday night, September 7, Shohei Ohtani told reporters, through interpreter Will Ireton, that he does not expect to pitch again this season. "Most likely, no," he said. "I'm going to be focusing on hitting moving forward." He called it "disappointing." That's the man who actually throws the pitches telling you the throwing is done for 2026.
That same day, his manager was still doing a soft-shoe. Dave Roberts, pressed on why he wouldn't just declare the pitching season over, said, "It's not dead, but we're not throwing." He added, "I'm choosing not to say it's dead." The day before, September 6, he'd waved at the calendar and offered, "obviously, if you're looking at the calendar, how much he's thrown in the last week, I think we can all do the math."
So do the math, then. Finish the sentence.
This is the part that bugs me. There's nothing to protect here. Roberts keeping the door "open" doesn't make Ohtani's right biceps feel better. It doesn't un-pause a throwing program. All it does is manufacture a running question that trails the Dodgers through every clubhouse scrum with a limited number of regular-season games left. Every reporter now has a standing assignment: ask about the mound again tomorrow, because the manager left it just cracked enough to justify the question. That's feeding the story, not managing it.
The timeline here isn't murky. Ohtani hasn't pitched in a big league game since July 3, working purely as a designated hitter after a left knee issue required a lubricant injection during the All-Star break. The buildup toward a return ran into a wall on August 28, when he cut a bullpen session short with discomfort in his right knee and a sore right biceps. That bullpen was the last box to check before a start against the Tigers. It got scrapped. Since then it's been a pile-on: soreness in the left knee, the right biceps, the neck. He went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts against the Cardinals on September 2, sat four straight games, then came back Monday batting leadoff as the DH and went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts and a walk in a 6-3 win over the Reds.
That's not what a guy about to climb a mound in October looks like, not to Ohtani, and not to anyone else.
And this isn't a low-stakes hedge. When healthy earlier this year, Ohtani was one of the best pitchers in the National League: 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA, a 0.95 WHIP and a 95-to-26 strikeout-to-walk ratio across 85.2 innings over 14 starts. In early June he threw six shutout innings against the Diamondbacks and dropped his ERA to 0.74. That's exactly why the ambiguity is worse here than it would be for some fifth starter. Roberts hasn't just declined to rule Ohtani out of the regular season. He's declined to rule him out of the postseason too. Dangling a two-way ace as a possible October weapon, when the player is telling you he's shifting his focus to hitting, keeps a rumor alive that the team itself started.
Shut Ohtani's pitching down for 2026, formally, today. Not because the Dodgers have failed him, but because pretending is the only thing left that can hurt them. Announce it, absorb the one bad news cycle, and let everyone move on to the actual job: winning in October with Ohtani's bat, protecting a division lead that looked comfortable as of late August, and shoring up seeding that was never fully in their control, with the Brewers sitting atop the National League and the Braves holding a tiebreaker over Los Angeles for second in that late-August snapshot.
A clean shutdown does something the current fog can't: it ends the daily interrogation and lets Ohtani stop being a question mark. He's already framed this as a learning year, something to build on for next season. Good. Let him. The organization's messaging should match its best player's honesty instead of undercutting it 24 hours later.
And if you need a reason beyond tidiness, remember the pattern. Back in 2023 with the Angels, Ohtani was raking, 44 homers and a 1.066 OPS, while pitching to a 3.14 ERA across 23 starts, right up until his elbow gave out in August. Every version of this two-way run has ended with the mound getting shut down under a cloud of "we'll see." The Dodgers can't prevent the injuries. They can control whether the aftermath is clear or coy.
Ohtani did his part Monday. He said the quiet thing plainly and moved on. The Dodgers are the only ones still whispering. Stop choosing not to say it. Just say it.
