MINNEAPOLIS — A large swath of the United States watched the sun disappear briefly on Monday. The Dodgers have barely seen the sun in four days.
Game time temperatures on this road trip to Chicago and Minnesota have stayed in the 40s with occasional rain adding to the chill. But the Dodgers should be able to warm themselves on the heat coming off of Shohei Ohtani’s bat.
Ohtani was 3 for 5 against the Twins on Monday – his fifth consecutive multi-hit game – and hit his third home run of the season as the Dodgers beat the Twins, 4-2.
Starting Wednesday when he hit his first home run as a Dodger, Ohtani has gone 11 for 22 with multiple hits in each game and eight extra-base hits overall (four doubles, one triple and three home runs).
Monday’s home run was the 174th of Ohtani’s career, one short of the record for a Japanese-born player in MLB held by Hideki Matsui.
“I mean, it’s pretty awesome to watch,” Dodgers starter James Paxton said who faced Ohtani with the Angels twice and gave up one home run. “If he puts the barrel on the ball it’s coming off at 105-plus. It’s pretty amazing just how hard he swings and how hard he hits the ball.
“I’m glad to have him on my side.”
At the opposite end of the temperature gauge was James Outman.
In his 25 at-bats before the seventh inning Monday night, Outman had managed just two hits while striking out 25 times. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts kept him out of the starting lineup against left-handed pitchers on Saturday and Sunday in Chicago, saying it would give Outman time to work on his swing.
There were no signs of progress as Outman struck out in his first two at-bats against the Twins. With the score tied at 2-2, though, Outman got a hanging full-count slider from Twins reliever Jay Jackson and sent a towering fly ball (the launch angle was an extreme 42 degrees) that floated into the right field seats for the go-ahead home run.
“It felt good to see a ball land,” Outman said. “It’s still pretty early in the season, so it feels a little early to freak out. But yeah, it’s a start in the right direction, for sure.”
During his rookie season last year, Outman endured similar cold spells at times. He said he learned an important lesson from the ups and downs.
“It’s never as bad as you think it is. And it’s never as good as you think it is. So just keep going and keep plugging along,” he said.
“I think experience is everything. You look at some of the guys in the clubhouse — Mookie or Freddie or Shohei — who have a lot of at-bats and a lot of experience, they’re just able to navigate the game better. There’s gonna be highs and lows, and they can adjust accordingly.”
If Monday’s go-ahead home run helps Outman escape a sticky wicket, cricket might become the most popular pregame sport among Dodgers hitters.
Ohtani said he started hitting off a tee using a bat with a flat barrel — a cricket bat — during the rain delay in Chicago on Sunday and it helped him with his mechanics.
“After I saw Shohei get two hits (Sunday), I was swinging the cricket bat,” Outman said Monday.
Three batters after Outman’s homer, Ohtani sent an opposite-field drive into the left field seats for his home run. He had carried most of the Dodgers’ offense to that point. His first-inning double sent Mookie Betts (who led off the game with a walk) to third base. Freddie Freeman drove him in from there with a sacrifice fly.
In the sixth inning, Ohtani led off with a double and scored on back-to-back singles by Freeman and Will Smith.
The seventh-inning power surge made a winner of Paxton for the second start in a row. Paxton went the first six innings, allowing a two-run home run to Manuel Margot (discarded by the Dodgers this spring after he was acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays as an attachment to the Tyler Glasnow trade).
“James was really good,” Roberts said. “It’s obviously a heavy right-handed lineup against the lefty. I thought his fastball really played tonight, had a lot of life. I thought the breaking ball, he used it when he needed to. Left one up to Margot, but outside of that he was fantastic.”
The Twins didn’t have a hit after Byron Buxton’s leadoff single in the fourth inning. Paxton, Ryan Brasier, Daniel Hudson and Evan Phillips combined to retire the final 18 Twins batters in order.