Shohei Ohtani was back in the Dodgers lineup on Monday night, and honestly, even a quiet night from him could not slow this team down.

Los Angeles beat the Cincinnati Reds 6-3 at Dodger Stadium for a fifth straight win, with Ohtani sliding back in as the designated hitter after a four-game absence.

The bigger story, though, was not the box score: it was what the game quietly told us about his health heading into October.

The reigning National League MVP is, by all appearances, done pitching in 2026, and the Dodgers are shaping their postseason plans around that reality.

The timing is not a small thing. At 87-57 and with a double-digit lead in the NL West, they can afford to protect Ohtani rather than run him into the ground. There are only 18 regular-season games left before the ones that actually matter begin.

For Australian fans following along at strange hours, the storyline is familiar and a little bittersweet. The most extraordinary two-way player in the sport is, for now, just a hitter - and even that role has been quietly compromised.

Shohei Ohtani Pitching Status: Biceps, Knee and Neck

Ohtani missed the previous four games while managing a trio of nagging problems: right biceps, left knee and neck issues.

Things came to a head on Wednesday against St. Louis, when he went 0-for-4 with four strikeouts, and the club decided a break would do more good than another lineup card with his name on it.

His August numbers told the same story. Ohtani hit .241 with six home runs for the month, which well off his earlier pace, and clearly compromised, even if six homers in a slump is still six homers.

The Dodgers had a genuine dilemma before Sunday.

Placing Ohtani on the injured list as a two-way player would have cost them a minimum of 15 days rather than the 10 that applies to position players, and losing his bat for more than two weeks down the stretch was a price they were not willing to pay.

How Teoscar Hernandez Powered the Win

On Monday, Ohtani led off, struck out twice and drew a walk, and the Dodgers rolled anyway.

Teoscar Hernandez supplied the power with a three-run homer in the sixth that pushed the lead to 5-1 with a nice follow-up to Sunday’s comeback win over Washington, where Mookie Betts came through with a go-ahead three-run shot in the eighth.

Manager Dave Roberts did not so much announce the pitching decision as let the calendar make it for him.

He acknowledged that after weeks of ramping Ohtani back up to pitch, the workload had caught up with him (both physically and mentally) and that a full-body-and-mind reset was overdue.

Why Ohtani Is Done for 2026

Ohtani, who officially remains a two-way player, was direct about it. He told reporters that returning to the mound this season is unlikely and that he plans to focus solely on hitting for the rest of the year.

He has not thrown a competitive pitch since 3 July, held back mainly by the left knee, and his pitching workload before the shutdown still stands out for how sharp he actually looked.

Across 14 starts he posted a 1.79 ERA, an 8-2 record and 95 strikeouts. Elite by any measure.

Team officials, though, have quietly worried that the effort of building back toward the mound was bleeding into his hitting, with the biceps and neck problems following soon after.

Even without him as a pitcher, the rotation is formidable as it is headlined by Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tarik Skubal, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, with Roki Sasaki working his way back and potentially available out of the postseason bullpen, and Emmet Sheehan recalled to fill innings (he tied a career high with 10 strikeouts on Monday, by the way).

So - yes, October is still very much theirs to lose. The real question now is 2027, and whether the sport’s great two-way experiment resumes at all.