LOS ANGELES -- In back-to-back pitching starts, Shohei Ohtani has hit a leadoff home run, limited damage, claimed a victory and come away angry.
The latest, in Wednesday's series finale against the Colorado Rockies, saw Ohtani clobber a 424-foot home run to straightaway center field in the bottom of the first, then give up just one run in six no-hit innings to lower his ERA to 0.82. And yet, in the wake of it, he lamented the four walks, the one hit by pitch and the overall inefficiency that abbreviated an otherwise dominant performance.
"Of course you wanna avoid the hits, but the result of that was a lot of walks today," Ohtani, speaking through an interpreter, said after the Dodgers' 4-1 victory, their fifth in a row. "That's something that I just don't really wanna do."
The Dodgers were just four outs away from a combined no-hitter when Rockies outfielder Tyler Freeman hit a line-drive, opposite-field single off Tanner Scott in the eighth inning. It went for the Rockies' only hit of the night. Their only run came after a walk and a hit by pitch were followed by two fielder's choice groundouts in the fourth inning. It was the only damage off Ohtani, even though he threw a season-low 56.6% of his pitches for strikes.
His second-lowest strike rate occurred seven days earlier, when Ohtani threw five scoreless innings against the San Diego Padres and later bemoaned his lack of feel. Asked whether he had ever managed someone with such unreasonable expectations, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts provided a quick answer.
"A guy that wore No. 22 that we remember," Roberts said, referencing Clayton Kershaw. "Very similar."
Ohtani, though, is doing things not even Kershaw could.
On offense, he has put an elongated hitting slump behind him, slashing .383/.508/.723 over his past 13 games. Before Ohtani, no man had ever hit a leadoff home run as a pitcher. He has now done so three times -- in Game 4 of last year's National League Championship Series and twice in the past week.
On the mound, he is arguably the front-runner in a loaded NL Cy Young Award race. The likes of Cristopher Sanchez, Jacob Misiorowski, Chase Burns and Chris Sale have all been dominant, but none can come close to matching Ohtani's ERA.
His is the lowest ever for a Dodgers starter through his first nine starts of a season, topping what Fernando Valenzuela had done by this point in 1981. Ohtani is also just the third pitcher since 1920 to allow no more than five earned runs in no fewer than 55 innings through his first nine pitching appearances, according to ESPN Research, joining Jacob deGrom in 2021 and Al Benton in 1945.
But Ohtani continues to believe he can be better.
"I know I say the same thing a lot, but it's just the feel," Ohtani said. "When something's off offensively, defensively, I could tell, and I just really couldn't find it."