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.
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.
Three batters later, 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 left-hander James 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).
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.
More to come on this story.
