Ohtani’s big blast punctuates historic run of clutch hitting

NEW YORK -- Add it to the list of things Shohei Ohtani has done that no one has done before in the recorded history of baseball: Seventeen hits in his last 20 at-bats with runners in scoring position.

Ohtani’s towering, no-doubt, three-run moonshot in the eighth inning of the Dodgers' 8-0 win in Game 3 of the NLCS on Wednesday soared right over the Citi Field right-field foul pole and into the history books.

Before that moment, nobody had ever tallied 17 hits in any span of 20 at-bats with runners in scoring position -- regular season and postseason. It was a Dodger who’d come closest. Frank Howard had a pair of 16-for-19 sprees for the Dodgers in 1962.

Now along comes Ohtani, who founded the 50-homer, 50-stolen base club in his first regular season with the Dodgers and yet has been the subject of chatter in this postseason because of his extreme splits. Going into Game 3, he was 4-for-5 with a homer and a pair of walks with runners in scoring position in this postseason, 6-for-8 with a homer and three walks with runners on base -- and 0-for-19 with the bases empty. That grew to 0-for-22 before the Dodgers gave him his first opportunity of the night to bat with runners on base against Mets reliever Tylor Megill with one out and two on in the eighth.

Is it fair to parse Ohtani’s at-bats this way, considering all he accomplished from April through September?

Mookie Betts made clear he doesn’t think so.

“I have no idea why people are talking about Shohei. He’s the best player on the field every day,” Betts said. “Oh, he hasn’t got a hit with nobody on. Who cares? It’s Shohei Ohtani. Everybody knows who he is every time he steps in the box. Everybody is expecting something to happen.

“That’s the problem. He’s done it so many times that you expect it. He’s a human for 20 at-bats. It’s Shohei Ohtani.”

On the FS1 broadcast during one of Ohtani’s earlier at-bats, Hall of Famer John Smoltz offered the counterpoint.

“Welcome to October, where everything is magnified,” Smoltz said.

Speaking of magnification, you needed a telescope to see what Ohtani did to Megill’s cutter. The righty reliever didn’t have the feel for that pitch on Wednesday, he said. It was diving instead of cutting.

"I was trying to get it up and in,” Megill said. “I just threw it into his honey hole, and he launched it into the upper deck."

The only question was whether the baseball would stay fair. Statcast says it left Ohtani’s bat at 115.9 mph and sailed 397 feet right down the line, and the eye test that mattered -- right-field ump Mike Muchlinski -- ruled it fair. The Mets called for an umpire's review and the home run was confirmed.

“That ball still hasn’t landed,” said Kiké Hernández, who also homered.

The Dodgers hope it’s the spark Ohtani was searching for. He’s 7-for-31 in this postseason, and boosted his OPS to .770.

“It's important for Shohei, certainly, to build some confidence,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “That’s No. 1.”