Shohei Ohtani makes his regular season pitching debut

The middle game of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ series against the Cleveland Guardians will be the first pitching start for Shohei Ohtani, who coincidentally is the second in a series of Japanese pitchers. Roki Sasaki pitched in Monday night’s game, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto will pitch in Wednesday afterno

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The middle game of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ series against the Cleveland Guardians will be the first pitching start for Shohei Ohtani, who coincidentally is the second in a series of Japanese pitchers.

Roki Sasaki pitched in Monday night’s game, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto will pitch in Wednesday afternoon’s finale.

Because of the World Baseball Classic, Ohtani only pitched in two games in Spring Training. He went 1-1 with a 3.24 ERA, striking out 15 batters across 8.1 innings of work. 11 of those K’s came

in his last outing a week ago against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. After that outing, both Ohtani and Dodgers manager Dave Roberts felt good about where Ohtani was in his preparation for the regular season.

This will be the first in what Ohtani and the Dodgers organization hope will be a fully healthy season for Shohei that will see him take the mound 25 times. Ohtani called every Dodger pitcher making 25 starts “ideal” after his first outing in Arizona.

For how long this first outing will last, Roberts said the plan was about six innings.

“Honestly, with Shohei, you’ve got to be willing to adapt,” Roberts said. “Because if he’s really efficient, then you’re still trying to win the game. And if it makes sense, I’m not going to just pull the plug just because of a certain number.”

Ohtani would also like to see the Dodgers offense give him some run support. The team has yet to have the first lead of the game in the four they have played so far. The first three saw them able to mount a comeback, but in Monday night’s game they could only muster two runs in the bottom of the ninth, which were not enough to beat the Guardians.

Miguel Rojas and Andy Pages are the only two Dodgers so far that are hitting with any great consistency. The Dodgers will be facing right hander Tanner Bibee, who pitched the first game of the Guardian’s season against the Seattle Mariners, going 5.0 innings and allowing three earned runs while striking out seven.