Dodgers must confront an uncomfortable truth about Shohei Ohtani

Shohei Ohtani couldn’t make it through an entire season as a two-way player as a 32-year-old.Chances are, he won’t be able to do it next season as a 33-year-old.Which is why Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman’s responses to a couple of questions he fielded on Wednesday were particularly alarming.In retrospect, could Ohtani have been healthier in the playoffs if the Dodgers had managed him differently earlier in the season?“I don’t know the answer to that,” Friedman saidConsidering where Ohtani is age-wise, is it still possible for him to play both ways for a full season?“I don’t know the answer to that,” Friedman said.Friedman better have been playing coy when speaking at the Dodgers’ end-of-the-season news conference.Because if he wasn’t, that would signal a major problem – specifically, that the Dodgers are detached from reality.Before they decide how aggressively they will pursue Tarik Skubal or how quickly they want to  turn over their geriatric roster, the Dodgers must have an honest conversation with Ohtani about how he can return to being a two-way player without condemning himself to another October in which he looks as if he crawled from a nearby infirmary into the batter’s box.But how can the Dodgers do that if they can’t even acknowledge what’s obvious?Such as how them acquiescening to his wish to play through knee and arm injuries was a major reason why he was physically compromised when the games mattered most.Or how him setting out to be a designated-hitter-slash-pitcher for an entire season is a suicide mission at this stage of his career.The Dodgers’ relationship with Ohtani isn’t a typical employer-employee relationship, nor should it be.But the way the team prioritized Ohtani’s desires over common sense this year pointed to there being an imbalance in power that was counterproductive.

Friedman’s reluctance to acknowledge Ohtani’s limitations didn’t dispel this notion.Friedman said th...