Shohei Ohtani takes the rare BP on the field amid a playoff slump, minimizing the impact of the dual role

At 5:37 p.m. Wednesday, Michael Bubles “Feels good” blared from the speakers at Dodger Stadium.

Shohei Ohtani came walking to the plate with a bat in his hands.

There was no one in the stands, of course. And no opposing pitcher on the mound. The Dodgers, on that practice day after returning from Milwaukee, were still about 22 hours away from resuming the National League Championship Series against the Brewers. For any other player, it would have been routine.

But Ohtani is not just a player.

Among the many things that make him unique, his habit of almost never batting on the field is one of the small but notable ones.

Which made his decision to do so on Wednesday a clear development.

Over the past two weeks, Ohtani has been in a slump. since start of the NL Division Series, He’s just two for 25 with a whopping 12 strikeouts. He was choked out by left-handed throwing. He made poor swing decisions and failed to hit the ball.

Last week, manager Dave Roberts went so far as to say the Dodgers “will never win a World Series with that kind of performance” from their $700 million team.

And so, Ohtani came to batting practice on Wednesday in the most visible sign yet of his urgent need for change.

“The other way to say it is if I hit, we win,” Ohtani said in Japanese when asked about Roberts’ World Series quote earlier Wednesday afternoon. “I think he thinks if I shoot, we’ll win. I’d like to do my best to do that.”

In Roberts’ view, Ohtani had already begun to improve from a miserable NLDS performance, when he struck out nine times in 18 trips to the plate against the left-handed Philadelphia Phillies, who, as president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman emphatically put it, “executed the most impressive execution against a hitter I’ve ever seen.”

In Game 1 of the NLCS against the Brewers, Ohtani was 0 for two but walked three; Two runs intentionally but another in a more disciplined five-pitch at-bat to lead off the game against left-handed opener Aaron Ashby.

The next night, he went just one-for-five with three more strikeouts, giving him 15 in the postseason, the second-most in the playoffs. But he had an RBI single, marking his first run since Game 2 of the NLDS. He followed that up with a steal, hitting his first sack of the playoffs. Earlier in the game, he seared a line drive to right at 115.2 mph, the hardest hit he’s hit since he took Cincinnati Reds outfielder Hunter Greene deep in the team’s postseason opener.

“The first two games in Milwaukee, his hitting was great,” Roberts said Wednesday before heading to the field and watching Ohtani’s impromptu BP session.

“That’s what I was looking for. That’s what I’m counting on,” he added, while noting the careful approach the Brewers also took with the four-time reigning MVP. “You can only take what they give you. So for me, I think he’s in a good place right now.”

Of course, Ohtani’s overall numbers still suggest otherwise. His .147 postseason batting average is second-worst on the team, ahead of only Andy Biggs. His seven-game drought without an extra-base hit is longer than any he had in the regular season.

“The first thing I have to do is raise my hitting level,” Ohtani said in Japanese. “Swing at strikes, not swing at balls.”

On Wednesday, Ohtani’s decline also led to questions about his role as a two-way player, and whether his return to action this season (and last October, doing so for the first time in the playoffs) contributed to his sudden struggles at the plate.

After all, in the days Ohtani played this season, he hit .222 with four home runs but 21 strikeouts. In the days immediately following the outing, he hit .147 with two home runs and 10 hits.

His current decline began with a botched four-hit shutout in Game 1 of the NLDS, when he also started with six innings and three runs on the mound.

In the days that followed, Roberts acknowledged some possible connections between Ohtani’s two roles.

“[His offense] “It wasn’t good when it was pitched,” Roberts said after the NLDS. “We’ve got to think about this and come up with a better game plan.”

Ohtani, on the other hand, somewhat backed away from that narrative during Wednesday’s practice, in which he also threw a practice session in preparation for his next start in Game 4 of the NLCS on Friday.

He admitted that although handling both roles is “more physically exhausting,” he responded, “I don’t know if there’s a direct relationship.”

“Physically, I don’t feel there’s a connection,” he added.

Instead, Ohtani on Wednesday began overhauling his swing the way any other regular hitter would. He took to the field for his rare batting practice session. Of his 32 swings, he sent 14 over the fence, including one that hit the right wing deck.

“There’s definitely frustration,” Roberts said of how he saw Ohtani handling his uncharacteristic lack of performance.

But he added: “It’s to be expected. I don’t mind it. I like the edge.”

“He’s obviously a very talented player, and we’re counting on him,” Roberts continued. “He’s just a great competitor. He’s very prepared. There’s still a lot of baseball left.”