Shohei Ohtani has seen his former club seven times since leaving the Angels in free agency after the 2023 season, but the Dodgers’ upcoming series against Anaheim will include his return to a role LAA fans are already familiar with. On Wednesday, he’ll make his ninth start of the year and first ever at Angel Stadium for the Dodgers.
Last year, when he stepped up to the plate in Anaheim for the first time as a Dodger, he received a mix of boos and cheers, and then he proceeded to hit a game-tying triple in his second at-bat in a game the Dodgers went on to win. If Ohtani pitches like he did in his last start against the Cardinals, he might hear a lot more boos.
In the grander scheme of things, the Dodgers are probably treating this Angels series as an easy opportunity to put some more distance between themselves and the Padres in the NL West (and recover some of their pride after a downright embarrassing loss to the Blue Jays on Sunday), and Ohtani vs. the Angels has happened enough before (he’s seen them three times this season alone) that it’s no longer that compelling a storyline.
When asked if Ohtani’s pitching return to Anaheim would be emotional, Dave Roberts gave the (hilarious) verbal equivalent of a shrug: “Not really.”
Dave Roberts borderline disrespects Angels by downplaying Shohei Ohtani’s first Dodgers start vs former team
If the Padres and their fans don’t think the Dodgers take them seriously, then they should see how the Dodgers talk (or rather, don’t talk) about the Angels.
There will be one at-bat that fans will be able to thoroughly enjoy: Ohtani vs. Mike Trout, part two. The last time they faced each other as pitcher and batter was during the 2023 World Baseball Classic, when Ohtani made Trout the last out of the tournament — he struck him out on a full count to win the whole thing for Japan. After that game, Trout conceded only that Ohtani “won round one.”
Trout’s not the player he was when he was in his prime, and isn’t really even the player he was just a few years ago when that at-bat took place, but the opportunity to get a little revenge on Ohtani should make for a fun matchup.
Sure, there are a lot of other guys Ohtani played with who are still on that squad, but still — very little reason to get emotional. It’d be hard to get a do-it-all, baseball-playing metahuman like Ohtani to get too worked up about it anyway.
