Will Blue Jays keep walking Shohei Ohtani? How Dodgers can counter the boldest World Series strategy yet

The Toronto Blue Jays lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in heartbreaking fashion in the early hours of Tuesday morning, dropping Game 3 of the World Series by a 6-5 final in 18 innings. Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman played the hero by launching a walk-off home run to begin the bottom of the 18th, yet it was Shohei Ohtani who had yet another game for the history books.

Indeed, Ohtani became the first player in Major League Baseball history to reach base nine times. He also became the first player to record four extra-base hits in a single World Series game since 1906, and the first player ever to hit multiple home runs in three games as part of a single postseason. Just as important as what Ohtani did during the first half of Game 3 is how the Blue Jays responded in the second half: issuing him five walks, with four of them registering as intentional in nature.

Afterward, Blue Jays manager John Schneider explained his rationale.

“His performance was really good. He’s arguably the best player on the planet, you know. I think you kind of react in real time a little bit,” Schneider said. “Again, man, they have a really talented lineup. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to just walk him and face Mookie and Freddie. So every situation is different. You got to really execute at a high level against him. I think the first couple games we did. I know he hit the homer off [Braydon Fisher] in Game 1, but I think that we executed pretty well minus today, and he’s a great player and took some really good swings today.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, for his part, said he understood why Schneider took this path.

“No, I get it. He’s the best player on the planet, and he was on the heels of a huge offensive night, and John smelled that and wasn’t going to let Shohei beat him at all, obviously, and even when nobody’s on base and putting him on to make the other guys beat him,” Roberts said. “Respect it and, fortunately, we have other guys behind Shohei that can still do some things and, yeah, I mean, a hard-fought game.”

Schneider also confirmed that he may continue to take the bat out of Ohtani’s hands, thereby forcing other Dodgers hitters to step up. Is that a wise decision, and how can the Dodgers counter? Let’s turn to some subheads.

1. Game 3 walks worked out

As noted, the Blue Jays walked Ohtani in each of his last five trips to the plate in Game 3. That included four intentional walks and one, the final, that came on four pitches — an unintentional intentional walk by most definitions. Here’s a quick breakdown of the base-out state for each of those walks:

In all but one of those cases, the Blue Jays opted to take their chances with Mookie Betts. (They intentionally walked Betts to face Freddie Freeman in the other situation.) Betts singled once after an intentional walk, but otherwise had a miserable game, going 1 for 8 with a walk and a strikeout. 

From a results-based perspective, Schneider’s gambles paid off time and again. That doesn’t mean Schneider should simply walk Ohtani every time he comes to the plate, however.

2. Intentional walks are easy to misuse 

While acknowledging the approach worked in Game 3, it’s worth remembering that Ohtani did make outs in more than 60% of his plate appearances during the regular season. Heck, it wasn’t that long ago that he was having a rough go in the postseason against the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers. 

Realistically, automatically putting him on base each time plays into the Dodgers’ hands more than not. Why? In part because Ohtani is a capable thief who can singlehandedly put himself into scoring position. And, in part, because the Dodgers have a stacked lineup. Sure, Betts has had a down year and postseason by his standards, and neither Freeman nor Will Smith has cleared an .800 OPS this postseason, but those are descriptive and not predictive statistics. All three batters have a lengthy track record of producing, and gifting them prime run-scoring opportunities is a strategy that won’t hold over a large enough denominator.

Put another way, there’s a reason that most studies on this matter have shown that there are a few prime situations for an intentional walk — when an elite hitter has zero protection behind him, or when they can be put on base without advancing another runner to set up a double-play situation — and are, largely, otherwise bad value propositions. To wit, MLB’s Mike Petriello found earlier this postseason that the intentional walk strategy generally hadn’t paid off for teams

3. How Dodgers can counter

You might wonder how the Dodgers can combat the Blue Jays’ strategy of taking the bat from Ohtani’s hands. The answer is, well, to take advantage of the free baserunner.

Betts’ continued struggles would seem to give Roberts an incentive to make a lineup change, perhaps flipping him with Smith (so the Dodgers can continue to break up their lefties) or even with Teoscar Hernández. It’s not clear that Roberts is even considering such a move, though, based on what he said concerning Ohtani’s intentional walks.

“I think it’s all relative. Barry [Bonds] is the greatest hitter I’ve ever seen, but this day and age, there’s just him or maybe [Aaron] Judge,” Roberts said after Game 3. “But, yeah, I think that we’re just fortunate we have Mookie and Freddie behind him. But you just don’t see that type of behavior from opposing managers and that’s just the ultimate sign of respect.”

It stands to reason that Roberts wouldn’t specifically mention Betts and Freeman, in that order, if he were contemplating flip-flopping the two (or Betts with anyone else). Perhaps that’s reading too much into his words after an 18-inning game, but, should that prove correct, it means that it’s on Betts to atone for some lackluster play this October and help deliver Los Angeles a second consecutive World Series title.