Ohtani Hasn't Homered Since Aug. 18. The Dodgers Are in the NLCS Anyway.

The Los Angeles Dodgers are headed to the National League Championship Series for the third straight year, and they got there while their biggest star was doing something close to nothing at the plate.

That is the defining story of this Dodgers October. Los Angeles beat the Atlanta Braves 4-1 in Game 4 of the NLDS on Wednesday to close out the best-of-five, per ESPN, advancing to a rematch with the Milwaukee Brewers beginning Sunday, Oct. 11 at American Family Field. It's the same opponent LA swept in last year's NLCS. The difference this time is that the Dodgers are winning around Shohei Ohtani rather than because of him.

The numbers behind the Ohtani slump

Start with the regular-season line, which was still excellent by any normal standard: .275/.377/.512 with 30 home runs, 81 RBI and an .889 OPS across 139 games. That is a very good season. It is not the Ohtani season anyone expected.

Now zoom in. Over his last 30 days, per the recent-form data, Ohtani is hitting .238 with a .524 OPS, zero home runs and one double across five games — a .273 OBP with a 36.4 percent strikeout rate in a 22-plate-appearance window. Reports from the NLDS had him at 2-for-8 with no extra-base hits, and Yahoo noted he hasn't homered since Aug. 18. He was dropped to the No. 5 spot in the order for Game 3 against Chris Sale, a notable demotion for a hitter who ordinarily anchors the lineup.

The root cause is health. Ohtani has been managing left knee, right biceps and neck issues that compromised him through the summer and landed him on the injured list for the first time in his Dodgers career. He said publicly he won't be fully healthy in the playoffs and will have to "just manage" the injuries. He is not pitching this postseason, a collateral effect of the biceps problem.

So why are the Dodgers still winning?

Because the roster was built to survive this. The advanced metrics still paint Ohtani as an elite bat by expected numbers — a .286 expected average and .552 expected slugging, with barrel percentiles in the 97th or better and a hard-hit percentile of 95 — which suggests the contact quality is largely still there even as results cratered. But the Dodgers aren't waiting on that correction.

They survived the NLDS on pitching. Yoshinobu Yamamoto struck out 10 over seven innings of one-run ball in the Game 3 win, and his recent form is dominant: a 1.99 ERA and 0.802 WHIP across his last 10 outings, with a 2.468 season ERA over 28 starts. Tarik Skubal, added at the deadline, posted a 2.72 ERA and 0.96 WHIP with 186 strikeouts in 158.2 innings and delivered a dominant postseason debut. The bullpen, once a question mark, posted a 3.67 season ERA and 10.1 strikeouts per nine, and Edwin Díaz notched his first Dodgers postseason save.

The bats that did show up mattered too. Andy Pages delivered the clutch October moment in the clincher, going 2-for-3 with two RBI, and he's hitting .269 with an .855 OPS and two home runs over his last eight games.

What it means for the Brewers series

None of this means the Ohtani problem is solved — it means it's been deferred. The Dodgers' team offense produced a .227 average over its last 10 games, and an 0-for-13 stretch with runners in scoring position in the NLDS is exactly the kind of inefficiency that ends a postseason run against a better opponent. Milwaukee won 103 games and represents a far stiffer test than a Braves team LA put away in four.

The Dodgers can beat the Brewers without peak Ohtani. Whether they can complete a three-peat that way is the question of the week.