MILWAUKEE — It’s been hard enough to beat the Dodgers this postseason even with Shohei Ohtani mired in one of the worst offensive slumps of his career.
Imagine how much harder that task becomes if the superstar finds his stroke.
No, Ohtani still didn’t look like the guy in line to win his third straight MVP Award after a 55-homer regular season. He was, after all, just 1-for-5 with three strikeouts. The one hit, though, was a clutch RBI knock in the seventh inning to drive in an insurance run.
But perhaps the most encouraging sign came in the second inning when he ripped a 115.2 mph lineout to right field.
Sure, an out is an out, but consider this: Ohtani had previously hit a ball that hard 47 times in his career, including the postseason. He was 47-for-47 with 28 home runs in those at-bats.
“I don’t consider Ohtani struggling. I don’t,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said at the start of the series. “It’s baseball. You can go through 30 at-bats or 50 at-bats and not put up the same numbers, but maybe be hitting the ball hard or whatever. But I don’t have Ohtani struggling.”
So maybe Ohtani smoking a ball or two on Tuesday is a sign of things to come. Maybe it’s not.
For the Dodgers, it hasn’t much mattered.
Even with Ohtani going 2-for-25 (.080) with no extra-base hits in the NLDS and NLCS, the Dodgers are 5-1 in those games — and it hasn’t been any one player picking up the slack.
As for the offensive support, it’s come from throughout the lineup.
“It goes back to the trust, the belief that we have in each other,” said Kiké Hernández, who went 2-for-3 with a pair of runs out of the No. 8 hole. “We know that, one through nine, we have the best and deepest lineup in the league.”
He now has nine home runs and 26 RBIs in just 28 career playoff games. Hernández is averaging one home run every 12.1 at-bats for his postseason career, which ranks ninth all time among players with at least 100 plate appearances — just behind Hall of Famers Duke Snider and Lou Gehrig.
Then, there’s Max Muncy, whose sixth-inning homer pushed the Dodgers’ lead to 3-1. It was his 14th career postseason homer, breaking a tie with Corey Seager and Justin Turner for the most in franchise history.
Overall, the bottom five hitters in the Dodgers’ lineup went 8-for-18 (.444) with four RBIs and four runs.
“Just getting guys on base,” Muncy said. “Anytime you can create traffic, especially in the postseason, it puts a lot of pressure on the opposing pitchers. These types of environments, the heart starts racing a lot and that creates a lot of havoc on the pitcher.”
That was certainly the case in the Dodgers’ NLDS-clinching win over the Phillies, when they loaded the bases before walking it off on Orion Kerkering’s wild throw to the plate. It was again the case in Game 1 of the NLCS, when the Brewers opted to intentionally walk the slumping Ohtani to load the bases in the top of the ninth for Mookie Betts, who then forced in a key insurance run with a walk.
“Our lineup is getting deeper and deeper,” Teoscar Hernández said. “When we’re healthy, that’s what we can do, even though the first four hitters haven’t done the best they can do.”
Is it getting to the point where that depth makes it impossible for opposing pitchers to navigate the lineup?
“I wouldn’t say impossible,” Kiké Hernández said. “But yeah, it makes it a little harder.”
