The Los Angeles Dodgers announced they will hold their two-way star out of Saturday’s lineup after a minor injury, forcing the club into the uncomfortable position of fielding regular human beings who only know how to perform one baseball task.
LOS ANGELES — The Los Angeles Dodgers confirmed Saturday they will grant two-way phenomenon Shohei Ohtani a rare day off to recover from a tight right bicep, temporarily suspending the franchise's primary business model and forcing the team to deploy archaic players who only possess a single skill.
Ohtani threw a season-high 110 pitches Friday against the San Diego Padres before experiencing discomfort during a seventh-inning swing. The workload has reportedly created a logistical nightmare for the front office, which had planned to spend the weekend watching the $700 million asset seamlessly transition from throwing triple-digit fastballs to hitting 450-foot home runs while the rest of the dugout quietly collected their salaries.
Our preference is obviously for Shohei to pitch eight innings, hit leadoff, and personally negotiate our stadium naming rights, but load management dictates we give his arm a day off," said Greg Halstead, Dodgers Director of Asset Durability. "For Saturday's contest, we will reluctantly deploy one man to throw the baseball, and an entirely different, heavily depreciated man to swing a bat.
The absence of the Japanese superstar has thrown the entire organization into disarray as executives scrambled to remember how a traditional baseball game functions. Stadium operations personnel were forced to hastily adjust Saturday's promotional schedule, realizing that without Ohtani in the lineup, they would have to market the game based on the performance of men who simply stand in the outfield and wait for the ball to be hit to them.
Manager Dave Roberts confirmed he would be forced to utilize a "bullpen" — an obsolete collection of four to six moderately talented men required to perform the pitching workload of one Ohtani. Roberts noted that evaluating the other 25 guys on the payroll has been a jarring experience, as most of them lack the intangibles required to simultaneously lead the league in OPS and single-handedly justify the team's regional broadcast deal.
At press time, Ohtani was seen resting his heavily iced bicep in the dugout while the Dodgers' accounting department frantically calculated whether a Saturday off-day violated the terms of his deferred compensation package.