If this was a normal season, and the Dodgers had clinched the National League West title by now, they could have given Shohei Ohtani Friday night off so he could bask in the afterglow of his six-hit, three-homer, two-double, 10-RBI game to become the charter member of baseball’s 50-homer, 50-stolen-base club on Thursday in Miami.
But this is not a normal season, not with the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, baseball’s two hottest teams since the All-Star break, within striking distance heading into the penultimate weekend, so Ohtani was in the lineup for the series opener against the last-place Colorado Rockies.