SAN ANTONIO — If you’re buying tickets to the Dodgers’ season-opening games in Tokyo next March, don’t count on seeing Shohei Ohtani pitch.
Though the Dodgers’ slugger is expected to be in the lineup for the start of the team’s 2025 season — which will kick off with two games in Japan against the Chicago Cubs at the Tokyo Dome — the two-way star was already uncertain to return to the mound by then after his Tommy John revision surgery last year.
Then came this week’s news that Ohtani needed labrum surgery on his left shoulder, resulting from the dislocated shoulder he suffered in the World Series.
Ohtani’s shoulder procedure, fortunately, was to his non-throwing arm, and isn’t expected to have any “big-picture” impact on his ability to pitch next year, according to general manager Brandon Gomes.
But it will add another complication to the 30-year-old’s offseason throwing program — and will probably push back his timeline to join the Dodgers’ starting rotation next season.
“We’ll see how he gets through this phase and then take it each step by step, because it’s complicated with somebody who’s also hitting,” Gomes said Wednesday at Major League Baseball’s general managers meetings. “So we’re just gonna make sure we’re checking every box to make sure he’s in the best possible position health-wise. And then whatever falls out of that smart, methodical process will be what it is.”
Ohtani’s chances of being in the Dodgers’ opening-day rotation were first narrowed during the playoffs, when he and the team decided to delay the completion of his pitching rehab until after the postseason.
Entering October, Ohtani was nearly ready to face hitters for the first time since his September 2023 elbow surgery. By that point, he’d progressed enough in his regular-season throwing program to be throwing bullpen sessions regularly.
But wary of overtaxing Ohtani during his first MLB postseason, he and the team elected to wait until the winter to have him face hitters again. And now, his labrum surgery recovery has thrown another wrinkle into those plans.
“I think we’re going to take it piece by piece and get through this … and not say, ‘Hey, we need to be ready by this day,’” said Gomes, who stopped short of ruling Ohtani out from pitching by opening day but did not cast an optimistic picture of that possibility. “We’re going to let the rehab process play out.”
The specifics of Ohtani’s recovery process aren’t clear. But in an interview with The Times on Wednesday, orthopedic surgeon Paul Rothenberg, director of sports medicine and shoulder surgery at Optum Orthopedic Institute, offered insight into the standard rehab for most labrum surgeries.
First, patients go through a period of “immobilization” of roughly four weeks, Rothenberg said, during which time the shoulder should be subjected to only “very controlled movement” and is often kept cradled in a sling.
“Early recovery is just kind of maintaining the range of motion, dealing with the inflammation, dealing with the pain, and doing it in a controlled, very specific fashion,” Rothenberg said, noting he advises his patients against even running during that stage of recovery. “So that you’re not putting undue stress on the surgery that you just performed.”
After that, the rehab focuses on allowing the athlete to regain full range of motion in the shoulder freely. At the 10-12 week mark, they can begin strengthening that part of the body again.
Rothenberg described Ohtani’s case specifically as a “decent situation” since the injury wasn’t to his throwing arm. Had he hurt his right shoulder, he might not have been able to throw again for four to six months.
“[That] would have been really bad,” Rothenberg said, “considering he’s already had elbow surgery.”
Given the need to protect the shoulder early in the recovery process, the team’s original pitching plan for Ohtani this offseason nonetheless “will look a little bit different now,” Gomes acknowledged.
“But,” Gomes added, “the positive thing is that, as far as big picture, no real concern on that end.”
A delayed start to Ohtani’s 2025 season as a pitcher might not have major long-term costs, either.
Coming off his elbow surgery, the probable soon-to-be three-time MVP was probably going to be on a restricted workload next year anyway. Though Gomes didn’t specify any hard innings limit Wednesday, he noted that the club’s main focus is on having Ohtani “at his peak come the biggest games of the year” next October.
In the interim, the Dodgers’ hope is that Ohtani won’t be compromised at the plate, since the injury, which Ohtani suffered after jamming his arm into the ground on a slide into second base during the World Series, occurred to the back shoulder in his swing.
“It’s just far less of a concern of how violent any of that would be as opposed to if it were the other [shoulder],” Gomes said.
Rothenberg agreed.
“For him, [it’s good] it’s the top hand, and not the one where in the follow-through of the swing you can sometimes fling the bat over your shoulder, because that would be the one motion where it would potentially irritate a torn anterior labrum, just that motion,” Rothenberg said. “For me, the fact that he’s a lefty batter, and it’s his left arm, the range of motion required to perform that motion, he should have it. And he should have it without any significant due stress on what was done. So in my opinion, I think he should be OK.”
The Dodgers are familiar with the counter-example.
In the 2020 postseason, former outfielder Cody Bellinger suffered a similar shoulder dislocation and labrum tear to his lead right shoulder, and underwent surgery the following offseason.
Bellinger was in the team’s opening-day lineup the next year, but struggled mightily through the 2021 and 2022 seasons, a period during which his agent, Scott Boras, said the former MVP winner was playing with “a 35% strength deficiency.”
“These guys are Ferraris,” Rothenberg said. “If you’re a little bit off, it makes a difference.”
The Dodgers, however, are hopeful Ohtani won’t endure any such regression, and that the impact of his labrum surgery will only be minimal.
“He had his surgery, and his prognosis is really good,” Gomes said. “We expect him to be ready for spring training.”
As a hitter, at least.
