Down 0-2, the Dodgers Are Riding With Ohtani: Roberts Keeps His Star in the Game 3 Lineup

LOS ANGELES, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2026

Down two games to none in the National League Championship Series, with their season tilting toward the edge, the Los Angeles Dodgers had a decision to make about the most famous player in baseball — and on Tuesday, manager Dave Roberts made it plainly. Shohei Ohtani will start Game 3 against the Milwaukee Brewers on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium. The Associated Press reported that Roberts confirmed Ohtani's place in the lineup on Tuesday, batting somewhere from second through sixth, and FOX Sports' coverage of the series told the same story: the two-time defending champions are not sitting their star with the season on the line. They are riding with him.

The numbers explain why the question even existed. Ohtani is hitting .150 in the postseason — 3-for-20 across six games, with seven strikeouts, no home runs, no RBIs and a .411 OPS, according to the Associated Press. Stretch the lens wider and it gets worse: since September 1, he has hit .180 with one extra-base hit, and his last home run came on August 18 at Colorado. For a hitter who has spent years making the extraordinary look routine, this is not a slump so much as a disappearance, and it has arrived at the worst possible moment — an NLCS in which Milwaukee won Game 1 by a 2-1 score and Game 2 by 7-4, both in Milwaukee, to take a 2-0 lead in the best-of-seven series.

There is context, and Ohtani acknowledged it on Tuesday. He played through right biceps and left knee issues down the stretch and spent roughly two weeks on the injured list late in the season. Speaking through a translator, he said his symptoms have eased — and, as the Associated Press reported, he was careful to say the physical issues should not be the reason he cannot hit. He believes he is close to finding something mechanically in his swing. Roberts echoed that read almost word for word. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters, according to the Associated Press: “He was very convicted that he is onto something mechanically (with his swing).” For a manager deciding between loyalty and urgency, that conviction clearly mattered.

Roberts was also careful about what the conversation with Ohtani actually was. Per the Associated Press and FOX Sports, the talk was framed as offering rest — not a benching. The distinction is not spin; it has a very specific precedent in this clubhouse. In the 2024 postseason, Freddie Freeman got a reset of exactly this kind, a breather that let him regroup — and Freeman finished that October as the World Series MVP. Roberts knows that history because he lived it, and it shapes the logic here: a night off is a tool, not a verdict. On Tuesday, after hearing Ohtani out, Roberts decided the tool he needed was his best player in the lineup, in a home ballpark, in a game the Dodgers essentially cannot lose.

The stakes around the decision could hardly be higher. Milwaukee won an MLB-best 103 games this season and needs two more wins to reach the World Series for the first time since 1982 — a drought their fans have carried for more than four decades. The Dodgers, meanwhile, are chasing a three-peat as two-time defending champions, a place in history that evaporates quickly if they fall behind 3-0 on Wednesday. Game 3 is set for Wednesday, October 14, at Dodger Stadium, 8 p.m. ET on FS1. The pitching matchup, per the ScoresAndStats listing, pits Blake Snell for Los Angeles against Robert Gasser for Milwaukee — a pairing that favors the Dodgers on paper, which is precisely the kind of paper that has meant nothing so far in this series.

So Wednesday night becomes a referendum on the oldest bet in October sports: that a great player, given enough at-bats, remembers how to be great. The Dodgers are not guessing blindly. Ohtani says the body feels better. He says the swing feels close. His manager heard both and chose to believe him — Roberts' bottom line, as the Associated Press reported it, was that Ohtani is well enough to help the Dodgers win a baseball game — and that was all the manager needed to hear. If Ohtani finds it — one swing, one loud night at Chavez Ravine — the series turns and this story becomes the prologue to a comeback. If he doesn't, the Dodgers will go down with their star in the lineup, which is the only way this franchise was ever going to go down. Follow the series in our NLCS Game 2 coverage, read how we framed the matchup before Game 2, and keep up with the whole postseason in our sports section and the Previously newsroom.

There is also a clubhouse dimension to the call that no stat line captures. Benching a healthy-enough superstar in an elimination-adjacent game sends a message through a dugout, and it is rarely the message a manager wants echoing into November: that panic outranks trust. Roberts has managed this core through three deep Octobers now, and his players know his patterns — he protects his stars publicly, absorbs the second-guessing himself, and asks for one big night in return. Freeman repaid that faith with an MVP trophy. The Dodgers do not need Ohtani to be the best player on the planet on Wednesday; they need him to be dangerous enough that Milwaukee has to pitch to the rest of the lineup honestly, patient enough to take the walks the Brewers offer, and healthy enough that one mistake pitch can still end up in the pavilion. Two runs of support for Snell and a bullpen that holds would do the rest — but none of that math works if the middle of the order is a rumor.