Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani is looking forward to his first playoffs, but he’s not nervous

LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani was asked if he was nervous before his first postseason game and had an answer before an interpreter could even relay the question.

“Nope,” he said in English.

Ohtani will make his highly anticipated playoff debut on Saturday when his Los Angeles Dodgers host division rival San Diego Padres in the National League Division Series.

“It has always been my childhood dream to be able to take part in an important game,” Ohtani said through an interpreter, adding: “I think the excitement of this is greater than anything I could ever feel.”

For six years, Ohtani played on the Los Angeles Angels teams, which did not play any significant games even in September. The excitement of being under high pressure as a Dodger appears to have had a positive effect on his performance. On the night the Dodgers clinched a playoff spot, Ohtani went 6-6 with three home runs, 10 RBIs and two stolen bases, becoming the first member of the 50/50 club. He did it in his 866th major league game, at the time the most among active players who had not played in the postseason.

Ohtani finished the regular season on a 10-game run that included a .628 batting average and an OPS of 1.853. Throughout September, as the Dodgers were chased in the National League West by the Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, Ohtani hit .577/.633/1.308 with runners in scoring position, a situation that caused him problems earlier in the year.

Dodgers officials hope this is an indication of how he will handle his first postseason. But they also pointed to his performance during Japan’s title-winning run in the World Baseball Classic last year, when he posted a 1.345 OPS and capped the finale with a strikeout against then-teammate Mike Trout, as a sign that the environment was under high Under pressure could do his best.

“I think the postseason will be different than the World Baseball Classic considering we had a week off,” Ohtani said. “So I’m doing my best to make sure my first shot is really good.”

Ohtani is one of three superstars on the Dodgers roster. But with Freddie Freeman suffering a sprained ankle and Mookie Betts finishing the regular season with three hits in 20 at-bats, the focus on Ohtani has only increased. The Padres could have as many as three lefty backups on their NLDS roster — Yuki Matsui, Wandy Peralta and, most importantly, Tanner Scott — and will use them against Ohtani as often as possible. It sounds like they’re trying to attack him.

“I’m not the type of guy that likes to run away from the competition,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “We definitely take our hats off and he is clearly an exceptional player, but I also believe in our boys. That’s what competition is all about. There might be a time in this series where we tell him to take the high road (with a deliberate move)” and we’ll take on Mookie and see what that looks like. But we are confident that we have the ability to get Ohtani out.

Ohtani said he remembers the Dodgers winning the World Series at the end of the COVID-shortened 2020 season. He was in Seattle at the time, training to recover from the disastrous return from his first Tommy John surgery and to establish himself as a two-way player in the major leagues.

What followed was one of the most impressive three-year stretches in the history of the sport, leading Ohtani to two MVP awards and a runner-up finish. But playoff baseball kept eluding him.

That will no longer be the case.

“Overall,” he said, “not being able to participate in the postseason is really a mixed, complicated feeling.”