The Dodgers’ season ended in the kind of hard stop nobody in Los Angeles wanted to face: a four-game sweep by the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series, and with it the end of any shot at a rare threepeat. A lot went wrong, but the biggest and most obvious issue was Shohei Ohtani, whose struggles hit at the worst possible time.
Ohtani dealt with multiple issues during the year, including his left knee and right shoulder. The shoulder issue kept him from pitching after July 3, leaving the Dodgers to navigate the stretch run without the full version of their two-way star. Still, there is encouraging news for the offseason: Ohtani will not need surgery for those problems or any other ailment.
That update came Wednesday from Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who also made clear the organization expects Ohtani’s comeback to roll into 2027 without those issues hanging over him. “I fully expect him to pitch next year,” Friedman told reporters.
Friedman also stressed just how unusual this whole situation is for the Dodgers. “This is unprecedented, what he’s doing,” Friedman said.
“So obviously for us, it’s unprecedented. We don’t have any experience to draw from.
We can’t go look at how other situations have played out to try to learn from the good and the bad. We have to all just figure it out together.
And I’m not only expecting him to pitch; we’re excited about him pitching. So now it’s about, ‘How do we do that?
How do we manage through a long season and have him at his best going into October?’ That’s a challenge.”
Ohtani’s postseason downturn was a huge part of why the Dodgers’ 2026 run ended the way it did. He went 4-for-22 with no extra-base hits in his first seven playoff games before finally connecting for a homer in Game 4 against Milwaukee. By then, it was too late to change the outcome.
On the mound, there was at least a flash of the version the Dodgers need. Ohtani went 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA before the setback derailed him and eventually shut him down.
So while the Brewers move on and the Dodgers are left with a brutal what-if, the club at least has a cleaner picture of what comes next. The long-term outlook looks better with Ohtani on the mend, and Los Angeles can start looking toward a path back to the top of the sport.
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