Dodgers Announce Shohei Ohtani Injury Update Before Mariners Game

Shohei Ohtani is out of the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup Thursday night against the Seattle Mariners, sidelined by lingering left knee soreness.

The absence ends an 11-game run as designated hitter since the All-Star break and raises the question the Dodgers have sidestepped all month about whether the knee that took Ohtani off the mound is now taking him out of the offensive side of the lineup.

Manager Dave Roberts said the training staff recommended the rest. Teoscar Hernández slides into the designated hitter spot and Kiké Hernández starts in left field, reported by Dodgers on SI‘s Noah Camras.

“More the soreness of the knee,” Roberts said, according to ESPN‘s Alden Gonzalez.

Ohtani had appeared in all 11 Dodgers games as a hitter since the break while managing both the left knee inflammation and soreness in his right biceps, as reported by CBS Sports.

Shohei Ohtani’s Left Knee Trouble Traces Back to June

The knee issue first flared up on June 11 against the Pittsburgh Pirates. It is the same left knee that required surgery in 2019 for a bipartite patella. Imaging turned up no structural damage in June. Ohtani sat one game and returned.

The four-time MVP was scratched from a July 10 start against the Arizona Diamondbacks, skipped the All-Star Game in Philadelphia and took a lubricant injection in the knee over the break. He has not pitched since July 3. Bullpen sessions keep getting scheduled and scrapped, the most recent one last weekend.

“I really took the All-Star break as that opportunity to really stay off my knees,” Ohtani said through an interpreter, as quoted by the Associated Press. “It’s really something that I have to just deal with over the course of the season.”

The discomfort shows up when he lands on his front leg.

“In terms of running, I’m not exactly at 100% capacity,” Ohtani told the AP. “When I know it’s not, then it’s always a little harder to be aggressive on the basepath.”

Los Angeles Dodgers Set No Timeline for Shohei Ohtani

Thursday is only the third game Ohtani has missed as a hitter this season, following one in mid-June for the knee and one in early July for the biceps. Two nights ago he led off against Luis Castillo and drove an 86.5 mph slider to center for his 23rd home run of 2026, his 10th leadoff shot of the year and the 28th of his Dodgers career, tying Davey Lopes for second in franchise history, according to MLB.com.

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman placed the blame squarely on the knee.

“If it weren’t for the knee, he would be pitching right now,” Friedman said, as reported by NBC Sports. “We didn’t want to put him in a position where he was altering his mechanics to try to protect the knee in any way.”

An MRI taken over the break came back clean. Ohtani is 8-2 with a 1.79 ERA and 95 strikeouts across 85 2/3 innings, and the club still expects him back on a mound before October.

Whenever the knee clears, Ohtani will need a full buildup before he faces hitters again, and nobody inside the organization has attached a date to it. Friedman said the vacancy has not pushed the Dodgers into a panic move for pitching ahead of Monday’s August 3 trade deadline.

Roberts was asked whether Ohtani might not pitch in the postseason at all.

“I guess anything’s possible, but for me, it’s highly unlikely,” Roberts said.

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