Shohei Ohtani’s walk-off homer on bobblehead night keeps Dodgers undefeated

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LOS ANGELES — They are awe-inspiring because of their superstars. Exhausting because of their depth. Overwhelming with their ability to make even the largest deficits dwindle. Seemingly unbeatable.

But the Los Angeles Dodgers are the greatest show in the sport because of Shohei Ohtani.

There might not be a better team in baseball than the Dodgers, who at 8-0 are off to the best start ever for a defending World Series champion. And there might not be a superstar more apt at meeting the moment than Ohtani, the reigning MVP who drew crowds in the thousands hours before first pitch for his bobblehead and sent more than 50,000 fans at Dodger Stadium home ecstatic with a walk-off home run, cementing a 6-5 victory after facing a 5-0 deficit.

The Dodgers have found ways to win even on nights when it seems they’re primed to beat themselves. They put themselves in that massive gap because of miscues and mistakes, as if to give themselves a challenge to speed run a comeback victory for yet another night. They have hardly played perfect during these eight unbeaten games, requiring a comeback to win in six of them. They’ve remained relentless in their ability to break through as baseball has sought to close the door on them.

Even with that, Wednesday night left them shaking their heads as Ohtani rounded the bases, raising his right fist in the air as the Dodgers pulled out yet another one, one more ridiculous than the last.

SHO ‘EM HOW TO WALK IT OFF! pic.twitter.com/DwG3MTUEIg

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) April 3, 2025

“Tonight, I was a little dumbfounded,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I was dumbfounded with the way we were playing. I didn’t recognize that club in the first couple innings. And then just dumbfounded we found a way to win that game. We had no business winning that game.”

They won it, in part, because Max Muncy damned the torpedoes. Nothing seemed to work for Muncy for much of Wednesday. He committed throwing errors in each of the first two innings, directly putting the Dodgers into a massive hole. The first, a throw across the width of the diamond that skidded off the dirt a few feet in front of first baseman Kiké Hernández, extended a long first inning for high-priced left-hander Blake Snell and pushed across the first Atlanta run. The second came an inning later, when he charged a bunt from Stuart Fairchild and whipped it into the base line, nearly causing a collision between Fairchild and Hernández and sparking a three-run inning. The throws, Muncy said, “are gonna haunt me.”

His continued struggles at the plate didn’t seem like they’d ease his mind. As the Dodgers chipped away at the five-run deficit, Muncy was struggling to acclimate to baseball’s newest trend. The bowling-pin-shaped “torpedo” bat had generated enough attention over the last week and Muncy had struggled mightily enough that the funky stick was worth a shot. He’d recorded just two hits in the season’s first week, so when the shipment of bats arrived at Dodger Stadium in time for Wednesday’s game, he brought one into the batting cage with him.

“It might feel like the most disgusting thing I’ve ever had in my hands, but sometimes that’s what you need to work,” Muncy said this week after placing the order.

The swings worked well enough in the cage that he took the bats into the game. Then he went hitless in his first three at-bats. In the last one, a strikeout against Braves left-hander Dylan Lee, Muncy noticed his bat wasn’t doing what he felt his swing was supposed to do. The different weight distribution in the bat takes some getting used to.

“My swings felt really, really good tonight but just a little bit off,” Muncy said. “So the last at-bat, I decided just to go back to my regular bat.”

With the score 5-3, the tying runs were on base in the eighth inning as Muncy was rummaging around the bat rack for his old one — one that’s silver, familiar and swung his season back on track.

He squared up a changeup at the top of the zone from Braves closer Raisel Iglesias, right on the barrel. It found the gap for a double, tying the game as the Dodgers rallied all the way back from a five-run deficit.

“It wasn’t the torpedo bat,” Roberts said with a chuckle.

The night had exposed what some evaluators across the sport speculated might be the way to get to the Dodgers — through their defensive alignment built to optimize offensive output rather than cover ground. Muncy’s two errors allowed the Braves to jump on them, and the second-inning outburst was extended when Andy Pages misjudged a ball in center field that clanked off his glove for a run-scoring double.

“Tonight, obviously, was the worst game we’ve played,” Roberts said.

But the week that preceded showed what was true of the Dodgers a year ago: They are seemingly inevitable, and no lead might be safe against them.

They had whittled down the deficit well before Muncy switched out his lumber. Tommy Edman and Michael Conforto each slugged home runs to cut the lead to 5-3, and the Dodgers progressively kept building innings against the winless Braves’ beleaguered bullpen.

“I think some teams, we can have a tendency to try to hit like a five-run home run,” Edman said. “But we just do a good job of taking it at-bat by at-bat and understanding we have a deep lineup and we’re capable of putting together a big inning at any moment.”

Another chance presented itself when Conforto flared a single into right field in the eighth. When Will Smith worked the count 2-0 against Braves reliever Daysbel Hernández, it prompted Atlanta manager Brian Snitker to call on his closer for a five-out save. Against this lineup, a daunting task.

Smith completed a walk. Muncy found the gap. And when the lineup turned over the following inning, the stage was set for the reigning MVP.

“For me, coming into the inning, tied in that last at-bat, it just felt like we really had a good shot to win,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton.

Having Ohtani certainly helps. He has made it a proclivity to come through with the timeliest of swings. He’s made history with gargantuan in-game performances. He’s marked his career milestones with home runs. To come through Wednesday, the first of a handful of bobblehead nights (the quantity of which has seemingly not dimmed the frenzy that comes with each), felt like small potatoes. It also felt inevitable.

“You don’t like seeing him come up anytime, really,” Snitker said.

Ohtani did not wait out the opposition. When Iglesias’ first changeup stayed up and out over the plate, he swung. Dodger Stadium shook before the ball landed in the seats in left field.

“He keeps getting into these situations and moments where you’re expecting the unthinkable out of him,” Muncy said, “and he rarely disappoints.”

“Everyone knew,” Snell said. “We knew. It’s just what he does.”

This is just what the Dodgers do. They’re one of two unbeaten teams left in baseball (San Diego is the other), still riding the high of a championship from a year ago. The idea of 162-0 is beyond preposterous, but at least this time Roberts had to laugh that the possibility was one game closer.

Will they finish unbeaten? Beyond assuredly not. But there is this.

“I think each night we’re unbeatable,” Roberts said.

(Photo: Gary A. Vasquez / Imagn Images)

This news was originally published on this post .

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