If you buy tickets for the DodgersWhen the season opens in Tokyo next March, don’t count on seeing Shohei Ohtani pitch.
Although the Dodgers slugger should be in the lineup for the start of the team’s 2025 season – which will begin with two games in Japan against the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome – the two-way star was already unsure about returning to the mound following his revision Tommy John surgery last year.
Then came this week’s news that Ohtani need labrum surgery on his left shoulder, resulting from the dislocated shoulder he suffered during the World Series.
Ohtani’s shoulder surgery happened coincidentally on his non-throwing arm, and is not expected to have an “overall” impact on his ability to throw next year, according to general manager Brandon Gomes.
But it will add another complication to the 30-year-old’s offseason pitching schedule — and likely push back his timetable for joining the Dodgers’ starting rotation next season.
“We’ll see how he goes through this phase and then we’ll take it step by step, because it’s complicated with someone who also hits,” Gomes said Wednesday at Major League Baseball’s general managers’ meetings. “So we’re just going to make sure we check all the boxes to make sure he’s in the best possible position health-wise. And then whatever results from this intelligent and methodical process will be what it is.
Ohtani’s chances of making the Dodgers’ Opening Day rotation were first hurt during the postseason, when he and the team decided to delay completing his pitching rehabilitation until after the playoffs.
Learn more: Shohei Ohtani undergoes surgery to repair torn labrum, should be ready for spring training
By early October, Ohtani was almost ready to face hitters for the first time since his elbow surgery in September 2023. At that point, he had progressed enough in his regular season pitching program to regularly throw bullpen sessions .
But anxious to overload Ohtani in his first MLB postseason, he and the team opted to wait until winter to have him face hitters again. And now his recovery from labrum surgery has thrown another problem into those plans.
“I think we’ll take it piece by piece and get through this … and not say, ‘Hey, we have to be ready by today,'” said Gomes, who paused before exclude Ohtani from the launch by opening today, but does not paint an optimistic picture of that possibility. “We’re going to let the rehabilitation process play out.”
The details of Ohtani’s recovery process are unclear. But in an interview with The Times on Wednesday, orthopedic surgeon Dr. Paul Rothenberg, director of sports medicine and shoulder surgery at the Optum Orthopedic Institute, gave an overview of standard rehabilitation for most surgeries of the labrum.
First, patients go through an “immobilization” period of about four weeks, Rothenberg said, during which the shoulder must only be subjected to “very controlled movement” and is often held in a harness.
“Early recovery is just about maintaining range of motion, managing inflammation, managing pain and doing it in a controlled, very specific way,” Rothenberg said, emphasizing that he even advises his patients against run during this stage of the disease. recovery. “So that you don’t put undue stress on the operation you just performed.”
After that, rehabilitation aims to allow the athlete to freely regain the full range of motion of the shoulder. After 10 to 12 weeks, they can start strengthening that part of the body again.
Rothenberg described Ohtani’s case specifically as a “decent situation” since the injury did not involve his throwing arm. If he had injured his right shoulder, he might not have been able to throw again for four to six months.
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“(That) would have been really bad,” Rothenberg said, “considering he already had elbow surgery.”
Given the need to protect the shoulder early in the recovery process, the team’s initial release plan for Ohtani this offseason “will be a little different now though,” Gomes acknowledged.
“But,” Gomes added, “the good thing is that, in terms of the whole situation, there is no real concern about it.”
A delayed start to Ohtani’s 2025 season as a pitcher might not result in any major long-term costs either.
After his elbow surgery, the future three-time MVP was probably going to have a limited workload next year anyway. Although Gomes did not specify a strict innings limit on Wednesday, he noted that the club’s main goal is to have Ohtani “at his peak in the biggest games of the year” next October.
In the meantime, the Dodgers’ hope is that Ohtani will not be compromised at the plate, since the injury Ohtani suffered after driving his arm into the ground during a slide at second base during the World Series has produced at the rear shoulder. in his swing.
“It’s just a lot less about how violent it would all be, as opposed to if it was the other (shoulder),” Gomes said.
Rothenberg agreed.
“For him, (it’s good) it’s the top hand, and not the one where in the rest of the swing you can sometimes throw the bat over your shoulder, because that would be the only movement where it would risk irritate a torn person. labrum anterior, just that movement,” Rothenberg said. “To me, the fact that he’s a left-handed hitter, and it’s his left arm, the range of motion required to make that move, he should have it. And he should have it without any significant pressure on what was done. So in my opinion, I think he should be fine.
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The Dodgers know the counterexample.
During the 2020 playoffs, former outfielder Cody Bellinger suffered a similar shoulder dislocation and a torn labrum in his main right shoulder, and underwent surgery the following offseason.
Bellinger was part of the team’s opening roster the following year, but struggled mightily during the 2021 and 2022 seasons, a period in which his agent, Scott Boras, said the former MVP winner played with “a 35% strength deficit.”
“These guys are Ferraris,” Rothenberg said. “If you’re a little behind, it makes a difference.”
The Dodgers hope, however, that Ohtani does not suffer such regression and that the impact of his labrum surgery will be minimal.
“He had surgery and his prognosis is really good,” Gomes said. “We expect him to be ready for spring training.”
As a hitter, at least.
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This story was originally published in Los Angeles Times.
