By FABIAN ARDAYA The Athletic
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NEW YORK — The 641 days that passed since Shohei Ohtani last threw against hitters on a big-league mound came amid some of the biggest changes of the 30-year-old’s life. He’s a World Series champion now who set more baseball history en route to a third Most Valuable Player trophy, has become a father, a husband, and, as notable as anything, changed his employer.

Ohtani took the mound to pitch batting practice at Citi Field on Sunday wearing a Los Angeles Dodgers uniform. He faced hitters for the first time since August 2023 and made his biggest progression yet toward actualizing his return to two-way play after undergoing a second major elbow operation.

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“I’ve gotten so used to seeing him as a hitter, and so to see him on the mound just solely as a pitcher, it was different and certainly exciting,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “for all of us.”

Almost five hours after his throwing session, Ohtani led off for the Dodgers by blasting a 411-foot homer off the Mets’ Kodai Senga, moving him into a tie for the MLB home run lead (18) with Aaron Judge.

In all, the day provided was a fresh reminder of his staggering skill set. Ohtani threw 22 pitches in BP against a trio of hitters that included infielder Hyeseong Kim, catcher Dalton Rushing and game planning and communications coach J.T. Watkins (a former Boston Red Sox minor leaguer). All indications were that the Japanese right-hander passed his biggest test to date in 19 months after undergoing a Tommy John revision operation that included adding an internal brace.

Ohtani’s fastball sat around 95 mph and touched 97 mph, according to pitching coach Mark Prior. He used his entire pitch mix, incorporating a pair of sweepers to go with an array of fastballs, sinkers, cutters and splitters. It was the type of stuff that made Ohtani such an enticing pitcher when healthy, as he finished in the top five in AL Cy Young voting in 2022 and produced 14.1 Wins Above Replacement from the mound with a 2.84 ERA in 428 1/3 innings in the three seasons before he got hurt.

“Everything looked real,” Rushing said. “It was getting on you, as it always has.”

“I don’t think anybody in that room would ever doubt what he can do,” Prior said. “But, he’s still got a long way to go and we’ll see where he comes out at the end of this year.”

Over five simulated at-bats, Ohtani recorded a pair of strikeouts, fielded a comebacker to the mound and allowed a double to Kim. When Watkins drew a five-pitch walk to end the session, the coach flipped his bat to commemorate the feat.

As several cameras and reporters watched on throughout the ballpark, Ohtani took a lighthearted approach to the event and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the occasion.

Assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness jokingly checked Ohtani’s belt, hat and glove for foreign substances before Ohtani took the mound for his final warm-up tosses. As he prepared to throw his first pitch with an actual hitter in the box in nearly two years, Ohtani bowed to Kim. His first fastball flew high and outside. Two pitches later, Kim chopped a grounder back to the mound. Ohtani lunged to flip it to a nonexistent first baseman.

When Ohtani threw a tailing pitch that Watkins flailed at (and bullpen catcher Hamlet Marte could not handle), Ohtani imitated an umpire’s strikeout motion to celebrate. It was Watkins who drew the highest velocity out of Ohtani, Prior said, along with “some of the nastier pitches he threw today, which was probably a little unfair for him,” he joked.

And after Kim lined a double to right field, Ohtani yelled over to Teoscar Hernández, asking the right fielder if he would have caught it.

“He’s having fun,” Prior said. “He’s a baseball player. He enjoys playing the game. He wants to be out there, obviously. He does it every day on the hitting side, but he’s looking forward to pitching. I think today was great because he was able to keep the mood light, but able to maintain some real stuff at the end. I think that’s always important.

“He didn’t look like he was having stress or under stress or amping up to try to generate any of his power. He was loose, and it was all free and easy. So that’s always positive.”

Now comes the final stages of Ohtani’s much-anticipated rehab. The right-hander threw bullpen sessions by the end of last regular season, ramping up enough that there was a conversation about whether Ohtani would start facing hitters by October until the club opted to have him focus on his at-bats during the Dodgers’ eventual World Series run.