With Major League Baseball’s highest payroll, one of the strongest bullpens in the game, and three past MVPs heading their batting order, the Dodgers may only have one major weakness: the health of their pitchers.

This season, the Dodgers have gone through dozens of pitchers due to a spate of injuries that have affected numerous players, including Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Clayton Kershaw, and Tyler Glasnow. However, Bill Plaschke of the Los Angeles Times has pushed the organisation to put the best pitcher on the staff back on the bump in October as they get ready for a postseason run.

“The game-saving pitcher this season? Shohei Ohtani,” wrote Plaschke. This might occur. This ought to occur. They need someone to intimidate Aaron Judge and Juan Soto of the New York Yankees in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series—why not Mitch Ohtani?

Ohtani suffered an elbow ligament injury the previous season just before agreeing to a record-breaking $700 million deal to play with the Dodgers. While recovering from offseason surgery, he has been restricted to a designated hitter role, but that hasn’t prevented him from slashing.290/373/612 so far, including 46 home runs and 47 stolen bases.

Plaschke, though, has stated that Ohtani’s recuperation is going well and that there’s no good reason to prevent him from helping the struggling Dodgers pitching staff in their quest for a World Series victory.

Plaschke stated, “Ohtani should be ready to pitch competitively by the time the postseason begins.” “So why not let him do it if he is physically capable of doing it, has already done it successfully, and is willing to do it given how much he wants to win a championship?”

Ohtani excelled in an exceptionally high-leverage circumstance last year, striking out then-teammate Mike Trout for the final out of the World Baseball Classic. Although it is difficult to believe that Ohtani is incapable of doing anything on a baseball field, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts offered at least one explanation for why he might decide to keep Ohtani off the mound for the remainder of the season.

Roberts informed Plaschke, “The problem is, in reality, he hasn’t thrown a leverage pitch in over a year.” Should he emerge and things go wrong, the risk of harm is not worth taking. It is impossible to replicate the tension of just a single inning. It just doesn’t seem worth it to me.

Still, who knows when and if the Dodgers end up facing the last batter in the World Series? Ohtani may have the opportunity to write even more history.