'Just gave us life': Shohei Ohtani provides spark for Dodgers in playoff debut

LOS ANGELES — For six seasons, the baseball world wondered what it would be like to see Shohei Ohtani, one of the most electric baseball players of this generation, in the MLB playoffs.

The San Diego Padres found out the hard way.

The Los Angeles Dodgers slugger ignited his offense with a thunderous three-run home run that propelled his team to a 7-5 victory over their rival in Game 1 of the National League Divisional Series. He proved in his playoff debut that his 10-year, $700 million contract is worth every penny.

“I could really feel the intensity of the stadium before the game began, and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” Ohtani said.

The first inning was a sight Dodger fans have seen often in recent postseason appearances. Its starting pitcher – this time Yoshinobo Yamamoto – got lit up before the sun even set in Southern California. A Manny Machado home run capped off three runs in the top of the frame for the Padres and the Dodgers were unable to answer in their first time up to the plate.

But all those struggles changed in the bottom of the second. In the most meaningful at-bat so far of his career, Ohtani took Dylan Cease to right field, threw his bat and yelled as the raucous Dodger Stadium crowd watched the ball go over the right field wall and tie the game.

No, the swing didn’t win the game. Los Angeles fell into another deficit the following inning, but another offseason signing came up big. Teoscar Hernandez, an underrated signing before spring training, hit a two-run single in the fourth inning that gave Los Angeles a lead it held onto for the remainder of the game.

The new acquisitions were exactly what the Dodgers needed when they’ve faltered far too often.

In just the first game of this series, the Dodgers scored seven runs. Last season, when the Dodgers were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks, the offense scored only six runs in three games and the stars were nowhere to be found. In 2022, when San Diego won three in a row to eliminate them, it only scored seven runs in three defeats.

Just when it looked like it was going to be the start of another tough October in Los Angeles, Ohtani was there to change the narrative.

“It's just got the momentum back for us and just gave us life,” manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani’s home run. “From pitch one, the fans were just engaged, were in it. I felt that energy and I think Shohei feeds off that. But that was just a huge hit.”

Even though it was Hernandez who hit the go-ahead run, he took no credit for leading the team to a win. He deferred all of that to his leadoff hitter.

“(Ohtani) is the guy that is going to guide us through all this, and we will follow and try to stay and play at the same level,” Hernandez said.

Ohtani said he was very pleased to get the home run off a pitcher like Cease, especially since he’s been solid against the Dodgers this season. In two starts against Los Angeles, he pitched 10 ⅔ innings and gave up four runs on eight hits with 10 strikeouts total, but hadn’t allowed a Dodgers hitter to hit one over the fence.

Padres manager Mike Shildt said Cease had a really good first at-bat against Ohtani, when he got him to fly out in the first inning. But he said he put the pitch – a four-seam fastball at the top of the strike zone – in a spot they didn’t like and Ohtani made him pay.

“It’s just about execution, right? You got to be even finer against really good players,” Shildt said. “We just got something that was out over and he was able to get the bat on.”

While it was his first MLB postseason game, Ohtani is no stranger to the bright lights. He won a title while playing in Japan, and who could forget the performance he put up for Japan in the World Baseball Classic in 2023, when he was named the tournament MVP?

The slugger said it’s tough to compare his past experiences with his current situation, but he knew the intensity picked up a notch.

“I thought it was pretty exciting,” Ohtani said.

That excitement certainly took the burden off Yamamoto after he gave up three runs in the first and two more in the second before he was pulled.

Yamamoto said he was appreciative that the offense picked him up. The bullpen also stepped up big for Los Angeles. After San Diego got five runs on five hits in the first three innings, it failed to score again and only got two more hits and struck out seven times in the final six frames.

The fellow Japanese star said he is going to go back to the drawing board to figure out what went wrong. If this series ends up going four or five games like several people expect, he is likely to be called on again to take the mound. He added he was just falling behind early in at-bats, but there may have been something else playing into it; Roberts said it appeared like the Padres picked up on what Yamamoto was delivering.

“There are some things that I think that we're going to dig into because I think at second base, they had some things with his glove and giving away some pitches. So we're going to clean that up,” he said. “It's on us to kind of clean that up and not give away what pitch is going to throw. We'll clean that up internally.”

Still, Saturday was all about Ohtani. Not only was there extra attention to Saturday being his first MLB playoff game, but he was coming off the hottest stretch of this season. Since that day in Miami when he became the first MLB player to hit 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a season, he had a .628 batting average with six home runs and 20 RBI. If there are runners in scoring position, it’s been pretty much a guarantee Ohtani is going to bring them home.

There was no telling if Ohtani would be able to keep it going. He even admitted it’s tough to get comfortable playing that first playoff game when you’re coming off the layoff the top two seeds in each league are given and clearly haven’t helped Los Angeles the past two seasons.

But these games are the reasons why Ohtani chose to spend the next decade with the Dodgers. He was excited to be in a “high intensity environment” and if he can deliver just like he did in Game 1, he may be able to get the Dodgers back to glory.

“He certainly has that switch, that focus that goes to excitement vs. nerves and feeling pressure and trying too hard,” Roberts said. “I just really have never seen a guy in the biggest of moments come through as consistently as he has. It's really impressive. I don't know how he does it.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Shohei Ohtani shines for Dodgers in playoff debut