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Shohei Ohtani is set to face live batters — the final hurdle before he returns to the mound for the Dodgers, per Katie Woo at The New York Times. This is the step we’ve been waiting for. Facing live hitters is the last box to check in his throwing progression, and once he clears it, we should have a concrete timeline for his pitching debut this season.

Ohtani has been the most dominant hitter in baseball for the Dodgers since arriving before the 2024 season, but the pitching side of his game has been the long-simmering subplot. He underwent elbow surgery before his first year in Los Angeles, and the organization has been methodical — almost maddeningly so — about building him back up on the mound. He didn’t pitch at all in 2024, and the Dodgers have been careful not to rush things in 2026 either. Every bullpen session, every simulated game has been a checkpoint. Now he’s graduating to live at-bats, which means the stuff is where it needs to be and the arm is responding well to the workload increases.

Separately, Jack Harris at the New York Post reports that both Ohtani and Edwin Díaz have things to prove as the Dodgers evaluate their respective playoff roles. For Ohtani, that means demonstrating he can handle real pitching assignments with enough runway to be a factor in October. For Díaz, it’s about establishing reliability in a bullpen that has been in flux for stretches this season. Díaz came to the Dodgers with a dominant track record — his 2022 season with the Mets was historically great — but he’s had an uneven tenure in blue, and the front office clearly wants to see more consistency before trusting him in high-leverage postseason situations.

The pitching return of Ohtani has massive implications for this roster. If he can pitch even in a limited capacity — short starts, bulk innings, or a hybrid role — it adds a dimension no other team in baseball can match. A lineup that already features Ohtani the hitter suddenly gets Ohtani the pitcher too. We’ve seen what he can do on both sides of the ball, and having that available in October would be a legitimate cheat code.

I think the Dodgers will be smart about this. They’re not going to throw him into a five-inning start right away. Expect a carefully managed workload — maybe an inning or two initially, building up over the final weeks of the regular season. The goal isn’t September dominance; it’s making sure he’s stretched out enough to contribute meaningfully in the postseason. The fact that he’s reached the live-batting phase now, in late August, suggests the timeline is tracking toward exactly that.

As for Díaz, his role down the stretch could go a lot of different ways depending on how he performs over the next few weeks. The Dodgers have options in the bullpen, and playoff rosters are about trust. He’ll need to earn it.

Source(s): Katie Woo (The New York Times) | Jack Harris (New York Post) | First reported: August 22, 2026 10:11 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers