Ohtani Goes on the Injured List With Three Weeks Left. The Dodgers Say It's About October.

The Los Angeles Dodgers placed Shohei Ohtani on the 15-day injured list after Wednesday's game, and the timing says how his season has gone. Three weeks remain in the regular season. The earliest he can return is September 23. The Dodgers are 89-57, chasing one of the top two seeds in the National League and the first-round bye that comes with it, and their manager is talking about the postseason rather than the next series.

The injuries are a left knee and a right biceps, on top of a neck problem that has bothered him for weeks. The last straw was a swing. Ohtani had sat out four games, came back Monday, went 0 for 3 with two strikeouts and felt something on a swing, and the club decided it could not push through. Since August 8 he has hit .198 with four home runs, ten RBIs and a .689 OPS, numbers that would be a slump for anyone else and, for him, read like a diagnosis.

Dave Roberts did not dress it up. He said he had seen it over the last couple of weeks, that Ohtani had not been who he is and that there was some compensation in his swing. The concern, Roberts said, was that after four days off, taking four at-bats and feeling something in one of them was the point where the team could not keep going forward. He called it disappointing. Then he made the case for the move: take the 15 days, get him reset and feeling better, and build him back up during the stint so the Dodgers have the best of him for the postseason.

He is done pitching for the year. The two-way act that made him the sport's biggest attraction is on hold until spring, and the Dodgers will go into October with him as a designated hitter or not at all.

The corresponding move is its own story. Josue De Paula, a 21-year-old outfielder, was called up from Double-A Tulsa, where he hit .303 with a .401 on-base percentage, 27 home runs, 104 RBIs and 31 stolen bases. He is the first position player the Dodgers have promoted directly from Double-A in Andrew Friedman's tenure running the front office, and he is not eligible for the postseason, which tells you how thin September has gotten.

Freddie Freeman is dealing with right knee discomfort of his own, which Roberts described as cumulative wear and tear. Asked whether Freeman was headed for the injured list too, the manager's answer was absolutely not. For what it is worth, the Dodgers are 6-0 in games Ohtani has missed this season. Nobody in the front office wants to test that.

The calculation is straightforward. A wild card series starts September 29. A division series starts October 3 for a team with a bye. The Dodgers are trading the last three weeks of Ohtani's regular season, and whatever chance there was of a healthy stretch run, for the possibility that the version of him that shows up in October is the one they paid for. It is the right bet. It is also the first time in his Dodgers career that the team has had to make it.