LOS ANGELES (AP) — When Shohei Ohtani’s third home run rocketed off his bat and streaked toward the left-field bleachers, the few fans still sitting at Dodger Stadium rose frantically, as if every single seat in the sold-out building had received a shock.
At the plate and on the mound, Ohtani was simply electrifying in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series while he conjured one of the greatest single-game performances in baseball history — perhaps even all of sports.
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ two-way superstar delivered the 13th three-homer game in postseason annals Friday night, connecting in the first, fourth and seventh innings for three epic solo shots traveling a combined 1,342 feet.
He was similarly brilliant on the mound, throwing scoreless, two-hit ball into the seventh inning with 10 strikeouts and a masterful variety in his 100 pitches.
Ohtani also did it all at an extraordinarily important moment for his team: The Dodgers’ sent the defending champions back to the World Series with a four-game sweep of the NL’s best regular-season squad.
“That was probably the greatest postseason performance of all time,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “There’s been a lot of postseason games. And there’s a reason why he’s the greatest player on the planet. What he did on the mound, what he did at the bat, he created a lot of memories for a lot of people.”
After the raucous postgame celebration of the Dodgers’ second straight NL pennant since he joined the club, Ohtani attempted to deflect some of the spotlight to his teammates.
“There were times during the postseason where Teo (Teoscar Hernández) and Mookie (Betts) picked me up, and this time around, it was my turn to be able to perform,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “And I think just looking back over the course of the entire postseason, I haven’t performed to the expectation, but I think today we saw what the left-handed hitters could do.”
One left-handed hitter in particular carried the Dodgers to the World Series — and Ohtani, who reached base four times in four plate appearances, even identified the perfect capper to his historic evening.
“This is really a team effort, so I hope everybody in LA and Japan and all over the world can enjoy a really good sake,” said Ohtani, a connoisseur of the famed Japanese rice wine, while the crowd roared.
Ohtani earned the NLCS MVP award almost solely on the strength of this one iconic game. He was 2 for 11 with a triple and three walks in the first three games of the series.
He had been in an October slump by his lofty standards, going 6 for 38 in the postseason and sitting on an eight-game homer drought after hitting a franchise-record 55 in the regular season.
That’s the nature of Ohtani’s boundless talent, however: He can transform into a sporting superhero seemingly whenever he chooses, and the mound was his telephone booth in Game 4.
“The way he was struggling this postseason, and not to let it affect him and keep his psyche, his confidence, the same, is really impressive,” Roberts said. “So we knew that he was going to come through at some point. And what better night to do it while he was pitching, too.”
After Ohtani struck out three Brewers in the top of the first inning, he hit the first leadoff homer by a pitcher in major league history during the bottom half — and his night of incredible feats was just beginning.
His second homer was a jaw-dropping, 469-foot drive that cleared a roof over the pavilion in right-center — a place where few homers ever land — after leaving his bat at 116.9 mph.
His seventh-inning shot settled in the left-center bleachers and crushed the Brewers, who had finally chased him from the mound by getting two runners on in the top of the inning, only to go scoreless anyway when reliever Alex Vesia escaped the jam.
The three-time MVP is the first player with a three-homer postseason game since Chris Taylor did it for the Dodgers in October 2021. Kiké Hernández, Ohtani’s current teammate, also accomplished the feat for the Dodgers in the 2017 NLCS.
The only other player in baseball history to hit three homers in a game in which he was a starting pitcher was Jim Tobin, who did it for the Boston Braves on May 13, 1942.
Ohtani, who hadn’t homered since hitting two in Los Angeles’ playoff opener against Cincinnati, is the first Dodgers player with two multihomer games in one postseason. He also became the first player with two homers in a regular-season or postseason game with 116 mph or higher exit velocity since Statcast started tracking in 2015.
And Ohtani was outstanding on the mound as well.
He issued two early walks, but didn’t allow a hit until Jackson Chourio led off the fourth with a ground-rule double — and Ohtani stranded him with a grounder and two strikeouts.
He got two more punchouts in the fifth and sixth innings, with Dodgers fans rising for ovations each time he walked back to the dugout to exchange his glove for a bat.
While his two-way role requires him to do extensive off-field work to stay ready for both jobs, Ohtani had pitched in only two games over the past 30 days before Game 4, thanks to the permutations of the Dodgers’ schedule.
In his last regular-season start, Ohtani pitched against Arizona on Sept. 23, throwing a season-high 91 pitches. In his MLB postseason mound debut Oct. 4, he gave up three runs over six innings with nine strikeouts in Los Angeles’ 5-3 win at Philadelphia in the Division Series opener.
Ohtani also had the motivation of matching his fellow Dodgers starters, who have been phenomenal on the mound ever since the playoff race got serious.
The Dodgers’ rotation held batters in September to an MLB record-low .173 average for a single month. Since the postseason began, Los Angeles’ four starting pitchers — Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Ohtani — have allowed just 10 earned runs while pitching 64 1/3 innings with 81 strikeouts over their 10 playoff games.
Ohtani and the Dodgers have earned a week off before the World Series begins next Friday at either Toronto’s Rogers Centre against the Blue Jays or Chavez Ravine against the Seattle Mariners.
This club has struggled with long layoffs in past postseasons, but Ohtani admits he can use a break — and the Dodgers will spend at least the next couple of days basking in the brilliance they witnessed while punching their ticket to the Fall Classic.
“I do see it as a positive in terms of being able to rest, both as a position player and as a pitcher,” Ohtani said. “We’ve had some off days, but we’ve played some very meaningful games that were very stressful.”
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