before he left with a thigh issue<\/a>. It was a discouraging downturn for a pitcher who had, on a per-inning basis, looked as dominant as ever in his first season as a pitcher with the Dodgers. He entered that Angels start with a 2.37 ERA and 25 strikeouts in 19 innings, but took the mound Wednesday with a 4.61 ERA.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
Ohtani and the Dodgers responded with an adjustment.<\/p>\n
Shohei Ohtani did something new with his curveball<\/p>\n
Ohtani’s curveball is usually a complementary piece of his arsenal, which has always relied more on his four-seam fastball, splitter and sweeper to keep hitters off balance. He has never thrown the curve more than 8.4% of the time in a season, per Baseball Savant, and had thrown only 11 in 439 pitches this season (2.5%). He didn’t use the pitch at all until Aug. 6.<\/p>\n
Against the Reds, however, Ohtani threw his curveball 23 times in 87 pitches, accounting for 26% of his offerings. That’s not just a season high, it’s career high, going back to his time with the Angels.<\/p>\n
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It was an effective pitch Wednesday, with batters putting only one ball in play, a harmless grounder, while whiffing four times on seven swings and watching it land for a called strike six more times. Notably, he also threw the pitch an average of 3.7 mph faster than his 2025 mark entering Wednesday, indicating he and the Dodgers made a change to the actual pitch.<\/p>\n
Time will tell if Ohtani continues to use his curveball this way, but that’s everything you want in a pitch (in a very small sample size). With the Dodgers saying they don’t plan to have Ohtani go past five innings in a start until the postseason, he should have a full month of limited starts to figure things out.<\/p>\n
As for Ohtani’s bobblehead night, it was once again a packed house. In less than two seasons with the right-hander aboard, the Dodgers have already given away their fifth bobblehead featuring him, with a sixth planned for Sept. 10.<\/p>\n
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Fans still lined up well before game time to guarantee they received the collector’s item, though they had little reason to. The Dodgers explicitly say “All fans in attendance with a valid ticket will receive a bobblehead” for Ohtani bobblehead nights on their website.<\/p>\n
Since the start of 2024, the Dodgers have given away a bobblehead of Ohtani at bat, Ohtani and his dog Decoy, Ohtani receiving his NL MVP award, Ohtani stealing a base (in reference to his 50\/50 season), Ohtani finishing his swing (the other half of his 50\/50 season) and, soon, Ohtani pitching.<\/p>\n
That volume reflects just how important the two-way star is to the team, on both the field and in the financial ledger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fans who went to Dodger Stadium for another Shohei Ohtani bobblehead night got to enjoy the best pitching…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":181569,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[5407,102374,5048,1283,2442,1285,1266,56486,1306,1288,4712,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-181568","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-arsenal","9":"tag-bobblehead-night","10":"tag-cincinnati-reds","11":"tag-colorado-rockies","12":"tag-dodgers","13":"tag-los-angeles-angels","14":"tag-mlb","15":"tag-noelvi-marte","16":"tag-san-diego-padres","17":"tag-seattle-mariners","18":"tag-shohei-ohtani","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-united-states","21":"tag-unitedstates","22":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115104606035045101","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}