The Los Angeles Dodgers had one significant weakness en route to their World Series title last season.
Even after a historic offseason that added the likes of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow, a plethora of surprising injuries left their pitching staff decimated just ahead of the 2024 playoffs. The team was able to cobble together some solid starts and enough relief innings to win, but pitching depth became their focus once again this past winter.
Ahead of the 2025 season, the team signed Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki to stave off further rotation issues. And now Ohtani, who could be one of their best pitchers in addition to a generational slugger, is making some significant changes ahead of his return to the mound after taking all of 2024 off due to injury.
“Traditionally, I’ve been throwing from the stretch a lot,” Ohtani said through an interpreter, per The Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett. “But as part of being a baseball player, I do want to explore different options, different avenues, to see if I could grow as a player.”
Ohtani announced that he’d be changing his delivery to throw out of his windup rather than out of his stretch, as he did almost exclusively while serving as a frontline starter for the Los Angeles Angels. Following a UCL repair procedure in 2023, Ohtani has been unable to take the mound since joining the Dodgers and his plans for a new delivery will be highly scrutinized as a result.
“I do want to see how the body responds, how I respond to it,” Ohtani added.
Ohtani could debut the pitching change with the Dodgers as soon as May without any spring training or minor-league starts, and it might throw off some batters who have tried to prepare for Ohtani’s previous delivery.
But a lot about the timetable for Ohtani’s return to the mound depends on how his body responds to continued rehab and the new technique.
“There’s some complicating factors,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes told Plunkett. “Looking at the schedule, we have a general sense of what we’d like to do right now. But obviously once we get there, (we will) continue to talk to Sho and build him up so that … he feels as prepared as possible when he goes into a regular game.”
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