Birthday boy Shohei Ohtani strikes out 3 Astros in 2 scoreless innings in latest Dodgers start

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Shohei Ohtani has looked a little bit better in each of his pitching starts with the Los Angeles Dodgers. That continued on Saturday.

In his fourth appearance on the mound since returning from a torn UCL, Ohtani threw two scoreless innings and struck out three batters against the Houston Astros, who had blown out the Dodgers' pitching one night earlier.

Ohtani opened the day by allowing a single to Astros third baseman Isaac Parades, but that hit was erased by a double play ball off the bat of Cam Smith. Jose Altuve ground out to end the first inning. The second frame was much more dominant, as all three Houston batters struck out swinging on breaking balls from Ohtani.

It was a nice way to celebrate one's 31st birthday, as Ohtani did Saturday.

The Dodgers, who have been nothing but cautious with Ohtani in his return to pitching, pulled him after two innings and 31 pitches thrown and replaced him with long reliever Justin Wrobleski.

In six innings of work as a Dodgers pitcher, Ohtani now holds a 1.50 ERA with six strikeouts, a walk and no extra-base hits allowed. Perhaps more importantly, he's throwing as hard as ever, with his fastball topping out at 100.9 mph on Saturday. He threw the hardest pitch of his career, 101.7 mph, one start earlier.

The question now becomes how quickly the Dodgers will let Ohtani stretch out as a starting pitcher, as he still hasn't thrown more than two innings in a single start. The clear priority is to ensure he can make a full-strength start in the postseason, so as long as the team is sitting comfortably in the playoff picture — they were eight games clear in the NL West entering Saturday — it's hard to imagine them not having him progress as slowly as possible.

Even if Ohtani only spends a month or two as a real starting pitcher in the regular season, he is still well-positioned to win a fourth MVP award. He entered Saturday slashing .280/.382/.618 with an NL-best 30 home runs, and BetMGM had him as a -1400 favorite to win MVP.