Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani revealed the cause of his latest knee injury

CHICAGO — It turns out Shohei Ohtani actually has an idea of ​​what caused the swelling in his left knee recently.

After returning to the Los Angeles Dodgers lineup on Saturday — and promptly hitting a leadoff hit before later drawing three walks — Ohtani spoke to reporters for the first time since Thursday, when he left the team’s game in Pittsburgh with knee swelling that would have kept him out Friday, too.

Earlier, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said the cause of Ohtani’s injury was not yet known, only speculating that it might have happened while running the bases on Thursday night.

But on Saturday, the shortstop offered a different explanation, pointing back to his six-two-three-inning start on Wednesday as the root of the problem.

“Not a single incident happened suddenly,” he said in Japanese. “I think it’s because it’s my last start [pitching]the way I threw was not good at all.

In that start against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Ohtani gave up a season-high four runs (three earned) while throwing 102 pitches. Regardless of the results, however, he attributed his mechanical errors to causing his knee to swell the next day — when he remained in the Dodgers’ lineup as the designated hitter instead of getting a day off as he had followed his previous four games.

The good news for the Dodgers is that Ohtani’s knee problem appears to be behind him, at least for now.

The X-ray he got on his knee on Friday came back clean, according to Roberts. On Saturday, Ohtani said he “felt good” when he woke up and “has a lot of confidence that I’m going to be able to stay healthy,” with the swelling in the back of his knee finally gone.

The slugger looked unfazed at the plate on Saturday, when he hit his 14th home run of the year.

And as things stand, he’s still on track to make his next start on Wednesday, after testing his knee in a specific game on Saturday morning.

“He wasn’t 100% today,” Ohtani admitted. “But in the next three, four days, I feel very confident, recovered enough, that I should be able to start the next one.”

The only concern moving forward is whether Ohtani’s swing could continue to injure his knee.

The last time he had a knee problem was in 2019, when a rare birth condition in his kneecap – called a bipartite patella, where the bones of the kneecap don’t meet at birth – struck him as he underwent Tommy John surgery, eventually requiring surgery to address the problem in September.

The Dodgers don’t believe the situation is related, and Roberts said the club had no plans to change its usage plan with the two-way star.

Still, it will be something for the Dodgers and Ohtani himself to keep an eye on, starting the next time he takes the mound in his scheduled outing on Wednesday.

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