CHICAGO — Halfway through his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Shohei Ohtani looks quite comfortable with his new surroundings.
The Japanese slugger has been a sweet-swinging Hollywood blockbuster so far.
The Dodgers are on top of the NL West with a 50-31 record, and Ohtani has played a major role in their strong start. The two-time AL MVP is batting a career-high .320 with 24 homers, 60 RBIs and a 1.032 OPS in 78 games.
“It’s really about getting to know the guys,” Ohtani said Tuesday night through an interpreter. “You know I had my first impression, but really getting to know who the people are and the organization.
“As I stated before, I decided to sign with this team and wanted to do the best that I can to fit in. So I think overall, looking back, it’s been a really good first half.”
Ohtani, who turns 30 on July 5, agreed to a record-shattering $700 million, 10-year contract in December. The two-way sensation isn’t pitching this year while he recovers from elbow surgery, and it looks as if putting more of his focus on hitting is helping him at the plate.
“The reality is the workload has been a lot less,” Ohtani said. “So I can’t deny that. But at the same time, as a hitter, I’ve been getting better and overall I think I’ve been growing as a hitter, too.”
Ohtani hit a leadoff homer during Tuesday night’s 4-3 victory over the Chicago White Sox, extending his RBI streak to a career-high nine consecutive games — matching a franchise record. He walked and scored in the third inning, and then hit a tiebreaking RBI single in the fourth.
Ohtani moved into the leadoff spot after Mookie Betts was sidelined by a broken left hand. He is batting .419 (13-for-31) with five homers and 14 RBIs in eight games since Betts got hurt.
“I don’t know what more we can really say about him,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “I think we’ve said everything we can since he entered this league, about what an amazing player he is. But when you come over here, you just never know how first year’s going to go on any team.
“Sometimes you just got to step back and just appreciate a player like this.”
Ohtani drove a hanging curveball from Chris Flexen into the visitor’s bullpen in right-center for his NL-best 24th homer. White Sox right fielder Tommy Pham tried to make a leaping grab on the play, but was unable to bring it in.
Ohtani got so caught up in tracking the ball that he carried his bat as he jogged up the line. After discarding his lumber, he went back to touch first base because he was concerned that he missed the bag the first time around.
“Just wasn’t quite sure that I stepped on the bag,” he said.
It was Ohtani’s second leadoff homer of the season and No. 8 for his career. He is the first player to drive in at least one run in nine consecutive games for the Dodgers since Hall of Fame catcher Roy Campanella in 1955.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani is being more selective at the plate, and it’s paying off.
“When you do that,” Roberts said, “you earn pitches in the strike zone, and when he does that, a lot of special things happen.”
In his first at-bat against White Sox starter Shane Smith, Naylor grimaced after swinging at a high, inside fastball. He walked down the first base line and back before finishing his at-bat, which ended with a strikeout.
Naylor stayed in the game, but later exited after grounding out to second base to end the third inning.
Wilson told reporters after the game that Naylor is day-to-day.
Naylor, one of Seattle’s notable trade deadline acquisitions from the Arizona Diamondbacks, is hitting .289, with 14 home runs, 65 RBI and 21 stolen bases this season. Since joining the Mariners, the left-hander is batting .261 with three home runs and 10 stolen bases.
While with the Diamondbacks, the left-handed hitter was pulled from a June 23 game — also against the White Sox — in the fourth inning due to right shoulder discomfort. Naylor avoided a stint on the injured list and returned to the lineup two days later.
Donovan Solano, who hadn’t played in two weeks, took over at first base for Seattle when Naylor exited.
The Mariners, who swept a series for the first time since July 11-13, moved within 1 1/2 games of first-place Houston in the American League West.
NEW YORK — Jen Pawol was in her hotel room in Nashville, Tennessee, when she got the call she had awaited for a decade.
She was going to make her major league debut this weekend, becoming the first woman umpire in a century and a half of big league baseball.
“I was overcome with emotion,” Pawol recalled Thursday, two days before she will break a gender barrier when she works the bases during Miami’s doubleheader at Atlanta. “It was super emotional to finally be living that phone call that I’d been hoping for and working towards for quite a while, and I just felt super full. I feel like a fully charged battery ready to go.”
Her voice quavering with emotion, Pawol talked about getting the news during a Wednesday conference call with director of umpire development Rich Rieker and vice president of umpire operations Matt McKendry.
Pawol thought back to her long road. In the early 1990s at West Milford High School in New Jersey, she had a summer conversation with Lauren Rissmeyer, the third baseman on the school’s softball team.
“‘Do you want to come umpire with me?'” Pawol remembered being asked. “I didn’t think twice about it. Lauren’s doing it, so I’m going to do it.”
Pawol’s pay was $15 per game.
“She took a field and I took a field,” Pawol said. “It was a one-umpire system. I had no idea what I was doing, but I got to put gear on and call balls and strikes, so I was in.”
A 1995 graduate at West Milford, which inducted her into its Athletic Hall of Fame in 2022, Pawol became a three-time all-conference softball selection pick at Hofstra.
After umpiring NCAA softball from 2010 to 2016, she was approached by then-big league ump Ted Barrett at an umpire camp in Binghamton, New York, in early 2015.
“Moreso than any female that I’d seen, she looked like she could handle the rigors of the job physically,” Barrett said Thursday. “But what impressed me was her willingness to learn. She seemed like a sponge, everything that we were teaching her. I’m proud that I made her aware of the opportunity.”
Barrett invited Pawol to attend a clinic in Atlanta and then a MLB tryout camp at Cincinnati that Aug. 15. He invited her to dinner in Atlanta with fellow big league umps Paul Nauert and Marvin Hudson and their wives.
“I warned her: ‘Look, this is what you’re up against. It’s going to be 10 years in the minor leagues before you sniff a big league field,'” Barrett said.
Pawol was among 38 hopefuls invited to the Umpire Training Academy in Vero Beach, Florida, and started her pro umpiring career in the Gulf Coast League on June 24, 2016, working the plate when the GCL Tigers West played at the GCL Blue Jays.
She moved up to the New York/Penn League in 2017, the Midwest League after the first two weeks of the 2018 season, then worked the South Atlantic League in 2019, the High-A Midwest League in 2021, the Double-A Eastern League and the Triple-A International and Pacific Coast Leagues in 2023. She was called in for big league spring training in 2024 and ’25.
“This has been over 1,200 minor league games, countless hours of video review trying to get better, and underneath it all has just been this passion and this love for the game of baseball,” she said. “This started in my playing days as a catcher and transformed over into an umpire, and I think it’s gotten even stronger as an umpire. Umpiring is for me, it’s in my DNA. It’s been a long, hard journey.”
Pawol is among eight women umpires currently in the minors. For her big league debut, she will join Chris Guccione’s crew in Atlanta, where she expects about 30 family and friends. She is to work the bases during Saturday’s doubleheader and call balls and strikes on Sunday.
Pawol was at third base Wednesday night as Jacksonville beat Nashville in the International League when Sounds third baseman Oliver Dunn congratulated her.
“If I make it to the big leagues,” he told her, “we will have both worked all the levels together.”
Pawol repeatedly thanked her minor league umpiring predecessors, mentioning several who exchanged calls or texts, including Christine Wren, Pam Postema and Ria Cortesio. Just after her promotion to Triple-A, Pawol met with Postema in Las Vegas.
“The last thing she said to me when I saw her was ‘Get it done!'” Powal explained. “So I texted her yesterday and said, ‘I’m getting it done!'”
Barrett will be watching from Oregon, where he is attending Northwest League games this weekend.
“The hopes of this are that it inspires,” he said. “Who knows, there’ll be a young lady watching the game on TV and says, ‘Hey, I’d like to try that.'”
PITTSBURGH — It took 47 major league games before Pirates ace Paul Skenes gave up seven hits to an opposing lineup.
Skenes’ record streak of allowing six or fewer hits ended at 46 starts Thursday night in a 7-0 victory over the Cincinnati Reds.
According to OptaStats, the longest such streak to begin a career (excluding openers) previously belonged to Shohei Ohtani, who went 31 starts from 2018 to 2021 for the Los Angeles Angels.
Skenes (7-8) yielded seven hits over six innings Thursday night. He struck out eight and lowered his ERA to 1.94, lowest among qualified pitchers. He extended his scoreless streak at home to 27⅔ innings; he hasn’t allowed a run at PNC Park since June 8 against the Philadelphia Phillies — and that one was unearned.
“His stuff was elite,” Pirates manager Don Kelly said.
Skenes hasn’t permitted an earned run over his past five starts at PNC Park, the longest such stretch for a Pirates pitcher at home since earned runs became an official National League statistic in 1912. Skenes had shared the team record with Bob Harmon (1915) and Zane Smith (1990).
The 23-year-old right-hander is the youngest major league pitcher since 1920 with such a streak.
“Every time he goes out, he’s unbelievable, the way he’s able to attack hitters,” Kelly said.
Skenes has been especially effective against the Reds, with a 4-0 career record and 0.39 ERA to go with 33 strikeouts.