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Toronto Blue Jays plan to keep walking Shohei Ohtani in the World Series

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
|
Oct 28 2025, 4:27 pm
Toronto Blue Jays plan to keep walking Shohei Ohtani in the World Series
Jayne Kamin-Oncea/Imagn Images

The Toronto Blue Jays ran into many problems on Monday night in the World Series: a beleaguered bullpen, making subs earlier than they may have liked, and general fatigue after an 18-inning game for the ages.

But while there were two teams playing baseball for nearly seven hours, no one quite commanded the spotlight like Dodgers two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani.

In four official at-bats, Ohtani had four hits, including a pair of home runs. Oh, he also had five additional plate appearances, being walked intentionally on four occasions while pitching four balls to him on another instance.

“The guy’s a great player. There’s certain times where … you feel better about someone else beating you. If that someone else is Mookie Betts or Freddie Freeman, it still stings. But he had a great game and we’re just going to try to continue to execute,” Toronto manager John Schenider told reporters after the game.

Ohtani’s biggest moment in the game came in the bottom of the seventh inning, where he hit a first-pitch, game-tying homer off Toronto reliever Seranthony Dominguez.

While another intentional walk to Ohtani might’ve made sense in that spot given his track record, Schneider said he opted to trust his reliever.

“We’re trying to pitch around him. You trust Seranthony [Dominguez] to make pitches to do that. Sometimes, for pitchers, it’s hard to do that when you’re kind of trying to throw a ball and didn’t put it where you want to put it. But he had a great game, he’s a great player, but I think after that, you just kind of take the bat out of his hands.”

Schneider was asked a follow-up question about whether the people watching should expect more intentional walks of Ohtani going forward, to which he simply replied, “Yeah.”

“His performance was really good. He’s arguably the best player on the planet, you know. I think you kind of react in real time a little bit. Again, man, they have a really talented lineup. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to just walk him and face Mookie and Freddie. So every situation is different. You got to really execute at a high level against him,” Schneider said.

The Blue Jays and Dodgers return to action on Tuesday night for Game 4 of the World Series, going at 5 p.m. PT/8 p.m. ET.

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