Dodgers rule out surgery for Ohtani, expect him to pitch again in 2027

Shohei Ohtani will not have surgery this offseason, and the Los Angeles Dodgers fully expect him to pitch in 2027 — but exactly how they manage baseball's only two-way star through a full season remains, by the team's own admission, an open question.

Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman delivered both answers at the club's end-of-season press conference Wednesday at Dodger Stadium, five days after the Dodgers were swept out of the NLCS by the Milwaukee Brewers.

That's not on the table. ... I fully expect him to pitch next year. I not only expect him to pitch, we're excited about him pitching.— Andrew Friedman, President of Baseball Operations, Los Angeles Dodgers

Doctors assessed Ohtani's left knee and right biceps and determined rest was the right call, Friedman said. The knee had bothered Ohtani on and off throughout the season, forcing him off the mound after July 3; right biceps inflammation then sent him to the injured list in September. He never threw another pitch in 2026.

It was just an unfortunate game of whack-a-mole.— Andrew Friedman, President of Baseball Operations, Los Angeles Dodgers

The announcement closes a question Ohtani himself had left open after the NLCS sweep. He told reporters surgery was something that would need to be analyzed and discussed over the offseason, though he was unambiguous about wanting to return to the mound.

The injuries visibly eroded Ohtani's production. Through Aug. 18, his slash line stood at .294/.390/.558 with a 153 wRC+, a mark that put him atop the National League in OPS. From that point through the postseason, he hit .167/.298/.240 with one home run in his final 26 games — postseason included — and struck out 10 times in 26 postseason at-bats, according to cbssports.com and sportsgossip.com. His lone postseason extra-base hit was a 428-foot, 113.1-mph three-run home run off Dustin May in Game 4, per sportsgossip.com — not enough to prevent the sweep.

Through mid-August he was still, I think, the consensus MVP.— Andrew Friedman, President of Baseball Operations, Los Angeles Dodgers

Before the injuries took hold, Ohtani had been dominant on the mound: 14 starts, 85⅔ innings, an 8-2 record, a 1.79 ERA, 95 strikeouts and a 0.95 WHIP. According to sportsgossip.com, FanGraphs put the value of his pitching alone at 2.9 wins above replacement, with his full-season fWAR reaching 6.6.

Friedman acknowledged the Dodgers have no settled plan for how to deploy Ohtani as a pitcher in 2027, only that they intend to. CBS Sports outlined three broad options the team faces: keeping Ohtani in the rotation from Opening Day on a six-man schedule; holding him back as a hitter while he builds up as a pitcher — as they did in 2025 after his UCL surgery, when he made his first start on June 16 — and inserting him into the rotation mid-season; or using him as a reliever, an approach CBS Sports described as difficult to execute given the logistical challenges of warming up while also serving as the designated hitter.

This is unprecedented what he's doing. I'm not only expecting him to pitch, we're excited about him pitching. So now it's about, how do we do that? We're going to have to be very deliberate about it on all sides, because the value is incredible.— Andrew Friedman, President of Baseball Operations, Los Angeles Dodgers

The Dodgers' pitching depth makes the question more urgent. In 2026, Tyler Glasnow and Blake Snell combined to throw just 116⅔ innings, Yoshinobu Yamamoto stood as the roster's only qualified starter, and free-agent Tarik Skubal's potential exit could leave the group even thinner, according to sportsgossip.com and cbssports.com. Ohtani, who turns 33 next summer, has gone through only two full seasons as a two-way player without a major interruption — 2021 and 2022 — and still has seven years left on his 10-year, $700 million contract.

One external factor could complicate the Dodgers' timeline regardless of Ohtani's health: MLB's collective bargaining agreement expires Dec. 1, and a potential lockout could disrupt the spring training window Friedman's ramp-up plan depends on, according to sportsgossip.com.

Why it matters — Ohtani is the only active two-way player in MLB, and how the Dodgers manage his workload in 2027 — on a body that has completed just two uninterrupted two-way seasons — will shape both their World Series chances and the future of his unprecedented $700 million contract.

Reported by yahoo.com, cbssports.com, sportsgossip.com, mlbtraderumors.com, espn.co.uk